Noir Fan Fiction ❯ Red and Black ❯ Return, Act I ( Chapter 17 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Red And Black - By Kirika

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The seventeenth chapter. A chapter *without* Mireille and Kirika in it! Eeek! Sumimasen!

- Kirika

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Chapter 17 - Return, Act I


Kaede’s breathing came in measured, steady rasping pants as she glared intensely at her opponent through her veil of snow-white bangs, the long overhanging fringe matted to her forehead in places with light perspiration. The smile that was seldom absent from her countenance if ever was larger than usual, all but dominating her ashen face, the corners of her mouth pulled high into a feverish, feral grin; clenched teeth bared between tightly stretched lips. The slender yet solid length of wood she clutched in her white-bandaged hands before her creaked as she twisted her iron grip, lifting it slowly but surely until her fists, enclosed right above left around its bottom end, were in line with her head. A gentle curve bent the erect length of wood, the lower span where Kaede held it a smooth shaft of a handle, with the rest carved into the likeness of a katana; a delicate single-edged blade. It was a bokken; considered a practice weapon for the martial art kenjutsu, and for other Japanese sword techniques. But intended for practice or not, when wielded by Kaede she swung and thrust with it as if engaged in a real life or death duel, and struck with akin precision and ferocity, holding not a shred of her expertise or strength back. Restraint served to only blunt a warrior’s skill in the long run, impressing a poisonous acclimatisation on the psyche to curbing blows that could generate hesitation in actual combat, hesitation that could spell the difference between glorious victory and blood-soaked defeat. It was solely amateurs, weaklings, or idiots who willingly handicapped themselves by indulging in spineless, stupid habits. Kaede vehemently believed a fighter should release all of their raging spirit in battle regardless of the circumstances behind it; to deny your spirit unmitigated liberation whilst in conflict of any kind was to deny your true self.

Kaede carefully shifted her stance a fraction, her bare right foot snaking backwards a few inches, squeaking on the immaculately scrubbed and polished dark wooden floorboards where not a speck of dust made its home. Dominique was *very* fastidious about cleanliness no matter what a room’s purpose, even if that purpose routinely splattered rugs and furniture with spilt bodily fluids. There wasn’t a stain that lingered for more than an hour after it had been made in Ishinomori Tower, and most suffered from an even shorter life span on the penthouse levels at the summit of the building where Kaede’s family and the French woman herself took residence. Kaede’s martial arts training hall where she was presently spending her time honing her proficiency with the sword fell under that latter umbrella, which was a good thing given how frequently she smashed this weapon rack to bits or sliced apart that wall hanging to ribbons during the mayhem of her practice sessions. Her blazing spirit once unleashed was hard to control, like a rabid beast let off its chain, hungry for carnage and thirsting for chaos. Fortunately, for all of her tsking and tutting at the sight of hacked furniture and scuffed floorboards, Dominique scolded Kaede light-heartedly at worst for her occasional frenzied destructive binges. She rarely lost her temper with Kaede, but when she did, it rendered the younger woman a weeping wreck. A cross word from Dominique could tear her open like no weapon existing on Earth or even forged in the Heavens could.

The shrill, curt sound of Kaede’s movement filled the otherwise quiet training hall, and she tensed as she braced her right leg on the ball of her newly-positioned foot. Her eyes had stayed firmly on her sparring partner in front of her while she had arranged herself and thus she noticed his body stiffen in response to her altered stance, raising his bokken slightly in preparation to counter whatever she had to throw at him.

Kaede’s opponent who she had been trading heated blows with for the better part of a half hour was a greying, bearded man a dash past his middle years, but what could be seen of his body underneath his loose garb of white uwagi and indigo hakama was all sinewy muscle, like the hard roots of an old oak tree. It was as if every ounce of fat had been boiled away from him, leaving behind no more than the base constituents of a man. Spry as he was, he could brandish a sword with the grace of a viper, and strike with the alacrity of one, too. Horiuchi was a kenjutsu master; the newest of a lengthy string who had been persuaded to further Kaede’s already enormous understanding in the art of the sword. How he and his predecessors had been persuaded or even chosen the swordswoman hadn’t a clue--Dominique saw to it all, but the instructors she arranged for always met Kaede’s requirements… for a time. Horiuchi may have been as strong as aged oak and as quick as a viper, but Kaede was vengeance personified; implacable hatred fuelled her muscles and divine fury propelled her hand. And sooner of later, vengeance caught up with the damned… and delivered holy retribution.

Unlike Horiuchi, Kaede’s clothing deviated vastly from the traditional dress of a kenjutsuka. A baggy white tank top and equally loose-fitting grey silken drawstring slacks made up her outfit, and was informal attire to say the least. But Kaede didn’t care. She held no stock in tradition or customs. They were merely ornamental, superfluous; it was the art itself, the method of handling the blade, the method of piercing flesh and cleaving bone, which had bearing with her. If it did not help in broadening her knowledge of the raw skill, then it had no value and thus was cut away like a bad piece of meat. With this severe mentality only the choice parts survived--the all-important core. The fundamentals of killing with a sword.

Neither Kaede nor Horiuchi wore padding or protective gear of any kind over their differing garbs; this was a duel between masters, not some lay spar between teacher and student despite what the pair’s affiliation may allude to. The snow-haired woman was an expert kenjutsuka in her own right, the gore of dozens upon dozens of slain enemies having tarnished the purity of her hallowed katana’s delivering razor edge during her lifetime, followers of kenjutsu and other sword arts among them. But being an expert, a master, wasn’t enough; she sought absolute perfection. She had already achieved oneness with her katana, yet still she strived for more, still she relentlessly pitted herself against fellow kenjutsu masters and their particular, sometimes unique styles, adapting her own to counter theirs before drawing on her new-found or modified techniques to crush them in single combat, forcing them to submit beneath her conquering wooden blade. Kaede could tolerate no margin separating her from perfection; she had to narrow it at all costs, come as close as she could to perfection with her katana if not actually attaining blessed perfection itself. Weakness could sneak into that margin at any instant for as long as she let it linger, and no margin was too small not to invite it. Kaede couldn’t afford to be weak. Not now, not ever. She *had* to be strong. Strong enough to take on the devil-spawned ilk of Soldats. She would show them that she was not some gnat buzzing at their ear that would desist if swatted aside often enough. The ghosts of Soldats’ past sins had come back to haunt them; the spirits of the wrongfully slain were compelling Kaede to bring their murderer to justice. She was their vessel--a righteous avenger. She had to be strong… like steel.

A nervous tick suddenly developed in Kaede’s right cheek, a rapid muscle spasm that made one corner of her wicked grin twitch erratically. Yes… strong, like steel. Like Big Brother. He was strong. He was the strongest person Kaede knew. And he never betrayed any weakness of self to anybody--certainly not to his enemies, but not even to his friends or family. Kaede wasn’t as stalwart as Big Brother and doubted she ever would be, but she at least never openly bared weakness to any of her foes, or to those who could potentially become one… in other words, anybody who was not among her closest, most loyal circle of allies. That was another reason why you shouldn’t ever inhibit your fighting spirit, why you shouldn’t ever hold back. Holding back was a sign of frailty, that you had a crippling dearth of mettle to see things through completely. Kaede didn’t hold back; hadn’t ever. She would make Soldats taste the bitter tang of fear, force it down their throat, make them acquainted with it as though they were constant bedfellows, make Soldats fear’s whore. No weakness would cause her to waver from her sacred mission. She would be strong--she *was* strong! She *had* no weaknesses! Kaede would drive the accursed Soldats out of Japan and all the way across the ocean back to their roots in Europe, with those few who survived the expulsion having the privilege of being put to the sword in their motherland, their blood watering their native soil. All the lands of the world would be purged of their vile presence. The vengeful Heavens had judged them as the most deviant of sinners, beyond salvation. Only eternal damnation in the pits of burning Hellfire awaited them. Kaede would see to it that all of Soldats met their just fate. They would pay! Oh, how they would *pay*!

Kaede’s breathing had quickened in tempo little by little as her thoughts had raced, and had become heavier, deeper, her chest heaving up and down like a thoroughbred steed’s--a warhorse’s--following a fierce gallop into the frontlines of an awaiting army, a rank-breaking charge. Her pants came in louder and louder rasps while her body tightened like a compressing spring, the rock-hard, lean and well-toned muscles in her bare arms become increasingly defined with every passing moment. The bokken that Kaede held aloft trembled as her grip on it intensified, as though she were attempting to squeeze the life out of the weapon and it was giving its final death rattle.

All of a sudden Kaede seemed to reach a peak, a boiling point, and her breathing stopped dead. Her bokken ceased shaking, and her muscles locked. In the next instant she was surging forwards through the air towards Horiuchi, springing off her right foot with the ferocious roar of a vicious dragon leaping for the jugular of its prey, its maw open wide. The swordswoman knew for certain that this would be the last round of their duel.

Kaede’s bokken flashed diagonally downwards at her adversary with enough force to break his neck if the blow connected, but Horiuchi had obviously foreseen her opening attack and matched it strength for strength with a countering crosswise swing of his sword, the two faux blades striking one another with a sharp crack. Neither bokkens budged more than an inch once they had joined, not even when Kaede’s feet had hit the floor and she utilised what remained of her leap’s momentum to throw her weight against Horiuchi’s sword. Both kenjutsu masters’ unyielding arms shuddered alongside their wooden blades as they tried to push the other off balance, Kaede’s muscles noticeably bulging with the effort, the cords in her neck as thick as rope and as taut as violin strings. Her quick breath seethed past her gritted teeth, spittle flying and dribbling down her chin as she stared defiantly at her opponent, less than a foot between their rigid faces; one harbouring untamed fury, the opposite a mask of determined calm.

The seconds ticked by with neither Kaede nor Horiuchi gaining the upper hand, their swords locked in a stalemate, until by some instinctual mutual agreement they broke apart, momentarily darting away from each other, before launching themselves headlong across the gap separating them to exchange blows yet again.

Horiuchi led his rush with a thrust from his bokken aimed at Kaede’s chest, a thrust that was deftly slapped aside and safely clear of its target by the sneering woman with a single swipe of her own sword. Kaede retaliated immediately afterwards, executing a stabbing thrust herself but at her opponent’s throat, aggressively attempting to press home the advantage she had gained by smacking his weapon out of the way of his body. However, Horiuchi’s reflexes were on par with Kaede’s. Almost as soon as his bokken was knocked away, he swung it back obliquely across his chest from his lower right to his upper left, intercepting the snow-haired woman’s lunge in the nick of time and smashing her weapon up over her head.

Kaede managed to hang on to her bokken as it was violently bashed into the air above her. The hit had not come anywhere close to endangering the death grip she had on it, but she still spat an angry curse through her gnashing teeth regardless, aware of how open the parry had left her. Yet her sword was not her only defence. Kaede’s unbridled rage was a shield; the potent, reckless fervour it lent her body and mind a stubborn if crude, brutal, form of protection. But Kaede had no aversion to the crude and brutal. Vengeance’s fury coursed hotly through her veins, and the cruel ferocity it endowed her with was not meant to ever be tempered.

Horiuchi quickly reversed his bokken’s trajectory, his sights set on the opening in Kaede’s defences he had wrought. If his blade had been real, the ensuing slash would split the woman’s chest from breast to navel. It was an obvious move, one that a kenjutsu master or a beginner would have struck with, foreseeing the sure end of the duel with them the clear victor. But Horiuchi’s discipline would be his downfall. He was too strict in his ways, in his technique--devoid of passion. He could not compete with Kaede and her pious rage. He would be cut down.

Kaede reversed the arcing path of her own weapon, chopping cleanly and keenly downwards a mere fraction of a second after the length of wood had been deflected in the opposite direction, having expected her grizzled opponent’s uninspired manoeuvre before he had even altered his sword’s position to commence the sloping finishing stroke. There wasn’t any means to block Horiuchi’s incoming attack, but Kaede wasn’t looking to. Her bokken’s swing came behind her confident adversary’s, yet it was the one that counted. Kaede heaped all of her strength into the slice, all of her avenging power, which equated to thrice what Horiuchi had put into his. Consequently, when her slashing bokken linked with the greying man’s from the rear and their momentum was pooled, stacked behind the latter kenjutsu master’s sword, it was *she* who controlled its stroke.

Horiuchi grunted as wood shoved wood with indomitable brute force, whether in shock, alarm, or because of the impact of the hard blow itself, Kaede wasn’t sure. In truth she barely registered the grainy rumbling emitted from his throat, her mind clouded by the heavy red haze of burning anger, the lone parting through the fog a roiling tunnel that only channelled thoughts about seizing revenge for past defeats beneath Horiuchi’s tutoring sword… a revenge within reach.

Kaede exercised her dominance over Horiuchi’s swing to viciously hobble its range, literally cutting the slice short with the deft and compelling cleave of her bokken so that his once sure finishing blow missed her by a hair’s breadth. But a miss was still a miss by whatever distance irrespective of how slim, and thus it was more than enough to turn the tables in the snow-haired woman’s favour, enough to transform Horiuchi’s certain triumph into certain doom.

Kaede’s sword pressed her opponent’s downward until the latter’s tip was scratching the varnish off the floorboards, and then she held his bokken steady there beneath her own imitation blade, trapping it. Consequently she couldn’t bring her weapon to bear against him and put an end to this duel without releasing his, but a kenjutsu master did not rely solely on their sword. Or at least a master of Kaede’s calibre did not. If separated from her katana she was still very capable at defending herself and at neutralising aggressors--permanently. Her katana was just an extension of herself; both she and it were weapons, two weapons that could forge a partnership together and become one--a combination that was devastating. Kaede’s sword had done all it could now. It was left to her to finish the task.

Horiuchi’s eyes dropped for a split second to his and Kaede’s crossed and wedged bokkens, their depths for once showing a glimmer of distress--a glimmer that flared to utter panic once he lifted his attention back to his foe and saw the young swordswoman’s snarling face converge rapidly on his stunned own. Kaede’s forehead struck like a battering ram against Horiuchi’s face as she decisively head-butted him, and with an audible crunch of shattering cartilage and an eruption of bursting blood vessels, his nose was pulverised into a satisfying red and black pulp.

To his credit, Horiuchi did not scream in unchecked anguish as most would upon suffering the grievous though essentially superficial injury, but he did make a gruff grumble of pain and reel back a step, his clearly dazed head bobbing and lolling indolently on his shoulders as if attached to his body by a spring. Before he could recover his senses or recoil further, Kaede reared back her head--her fringe of formerly pure white hair now generously speckled with dark, clotted blood--and delivered a second crushing impact with her hard skull against Horiuchi’s gore-splattered visage.

This subsequent blow so soon after the first proved too much for the old kenjutsu master and he lurched back a few more steps, his arms dangling stiffly by his sides with his bokken held limply and seemingly forgotten in his left hand. Horiuchi’s ruined nose streamed blood down to his chin like a thickly flowing river and coloured his grey moustache and beard scarlet. His eyes were scrunched in abject agony, his tortured face a web of wrinkles previously unseen. He was aged oak tasting the bite of the woodcutter’s axe and on the brink of toppling. Cracks had appeared in his spirit and were splintering then spreading like wildfire; just one more hit and it would break, one more chop and aged oak would be felled.

And chop Kaede did. With splashed blood now streaking the middle of her face to be a near match to Horiuchi’s, Kaede hoisted her bokken in her two hands up into the air beside her head, adopting the same stance she had before at the beginning of this duel’s final round, and then swung the length of wood at her swaying adversary’s temple. The faux blade struck its target unopposed while Horiuchi floated in his stupor, the clean hit punctuated by a dull thud. The grizzled man’s head snapped violently to the side before prompting jerking the rest of his body along with it, the kenjutsu master spinning around before crumpling heavily onto his forearms and knees, subjugated at Kaede’s feet, his bokken whirling away from his limp hand across the floor.

Horiuchi moved feebly, crawling on all fours like a whipped, pathetic dog with its tail between its legs and its head bowed, the once imposing and dignified kenjutsu master brought low to his rightful place kneeling, cowed, before an invincible, self-assured Kaede. She towered over him in her proven superiority while blood dripped profusely from his broken nose and dotted the floor in a quickly amassing puddle, his bloodied and bruised face illustrating her victory over him; her dominance. But their duel was not done. Horiuchi was bested, yes, but his lesson had not been fully learnt yet. Now Kaede was the teacher, and Horiuchi’s lesson had to be hammered home so he would not forget it. He had to *recognise* that his rightful place was prostrate beneath her, that her triumph over him today was a product of her outstanding skill and not of mere luck, and that the same result would transpire any other day from now on if he ever challenged her to cross swords again, seeking to regain his lost honour. He had to accept that Kaede was his better, that her blade cut swifter and cut deeper than his--that she was the greater sword master. Because she *was*. Because his rightful place *was* beneath her, because she *would* triumph over him again in battle. So that he would remember those truths, so that they would be imprinted permanently on his mind, his defeat had to be devastating. *Crippling*.

Stepping nimbly around her fallen opponent on the balls of two light, dancing feet, Kaede threw her bokken out to the side in her right hand, and then without hesitation or mercy, brought it crashing down on the back of Horiuchi’s head, on the tender spot where the base of his skull connected with his vertebrae. She made no effort to moderate her coup de grace despite the aged man’s all but conquered condition, concentrating all of the ferocity that surged within her turbulent spirit into the potentially paralysing blow. Such was the ferocity’s strength that Kaede’s bokken exploded on contact with Horiuchi’s drooped head in a shower of wooden shards, half of a coarsely splintered carved blade spiralling off to clatter in some far corner of the training hall.

The loud crunching snap of Kaede’s bokken fracturing asunder echoing off the walls heralded the conclusion of the duel, Horiuchi succumbing to the comforts of unconsciousness upon having his head used to split the sturdy weapon crudely apart. The kenjutsu master instantly slumped flat onto his stomach as if someone had suddenly exchanged the muscles in his supporting arms and legs for water, his cheek hitting the hard floorboards with a slap and his tortured face settling into the expression of an uneasy sleep. A bloody paste of a tint verging on black matted his formerly shaggy hair, the thick grey covering seeming to have done little if anything to cushion the punishing impact of Kaede’s sword. Needles of wood varying in size and shape were knotted in the sticky tangle of blood and hair, and more littered the back of Horiuchi’s white gi and were scattered haphazardly atop the floorboards surrounding him. Horiuchi uttered not a sound, not now in his slumber or before when he had been ruthlessly bludgeoned. Whether his neck was broken or not, Kaede couldn’t tell. She mused that he might not even be sleeping; he could be dead, his body now a vacant husk and his soul already on its last and most important journey. His slumber could be the sacrosanct one that all women and men must one day yield to, the one that wrenched the soul from the earthbound shell and ushered it towards final judgement where its ultimate fate was carefully weighed and then decided by the Gods--saint or sinner, the Heavens or Hell.

Whatever the case, it was beyond Kaede’s concern now, although she would feel no pity if Horiuchi was dead. Honour would be more like it. Delivering a soul into Death’s waiting hands to be carried away for judgement was something to be venerated, more so if that soul were immaculate. Slaying sinners was a duty, but slaying saints was an honour. Kaede could not distinguish for certain which Horiuchi was--or had been--but she believed she had seen the good in his unblinking steely gaze underneath the cloud of discipline that had obscured it. If he were dead, then he would be welcomed with open arms in the Heavens.

Kaede stared down at her vanquished sparring partner as she stood over him imperiously. Gradually her arms lowered to her sides and her severe grip on the remains of her bokken slackened. Her heaving chest softened its swells and their frequency diminished, the heart that had once thumped maniacally there mellowing to an easier rhythm. In tandem her hot blood calmed its crazed gush through her veins, its spur no longer quite so adamant. The red haze that pervaded her mind thinned and then cleared, taking with it the heat from her temper, cooling it to a low, edgy simmer. It felt as though her skin was on fire, that its pallid complexion should instead be a bright red, flushed, with rising steam hissing from every pore. Her sweat was abruptly chilling to her body and she was made very much aware of it trickling down the middle of her back and sliding past her temples. The young woman had an urge to shiver and even hug herself; such was the loss of warmth.

Kaede’s spirit was receding within her, withdrawing its influence over her heart, mind, and body; the beast retreating and becoming caged and muzzled once again. With its exodus and restraint Kaede felt weaker, the strength fading from her limbs and her body suddenly feeling more sluggish and ungainly. Her fiendish, manic grin shrank in intensity too, and in width, dwindling from a frenzied rictus to her usual smirk. It had been as if Kaede’s feral fighting spirit had possessed her face to convey its tempestuous, murderous rage in the mêlée, the beast contorting her visage to mirror its own and spit its vehemence. But it was exorcised now, as was the rest of her spirit’s sway over her. The duel was done. Vengeance had been dealt.

“There is nothing more you can teach me,” Kaede said to Horiuchi’s prone and unresponsive form, undeterred by the latter. “Begone.” She tossed the stump of her shattered wooden sword unceremoniously on her former tutor’s back, the latest of many who had met similar fates, and then crisply turned and walked coolly away.

With Kaede’s dismissal of Horiuchi by word and by sight, the two women who had up until then been mutely standing adjacent to the walls at relaxed attention opposite each other in the rear half of the training hall, abruptly left their posts and advanced on the lifeless kenjutsu master, as if new life had been shot into their previously idle bodies. The pair was smartly dressed in trendy black business suits that clearly once had had expensive price tags attached to them, and both their outfits were cut in identical styles, albeit for the difference of slacks on one and a straight skirt that ended just above the knees on the other. The short thick heels of their black leather shoes clicked on the polished floorboards as they walked, their stride and posture exuding poise and pride, and the silver pins on the left lapels of their jackets flashed under the lights of the room. Up close, those small round badges portrayed two kneeling young women swathed in robes, facing each other, and bearing double-edged swords of European origin in their hands. It was an ancient emblem--or so Dominique had claimed when Kaede had pressed her on the subject--and one that was apparently still in use today… by the hated enemy, Soldats. However, purportedly that use was rare and grudging at best, owing to the shame those of Soldats felt from turning away from the true purpose of their secret society, of forsaking their true dogma ratified over a thousand years ago when the world was tearing itself apart. Now, Dominique had said, she used it as a symbol of Soldats’ roots, of Soldats’ ancestors come back to punish their wayward kin. Those who wore the pin were unshakably loyal to the Soldats of old, and totally committed to overthrowing the fetid Soldats of present day.

But what Kaede saw when she espied a silver pin on a black collar or lapel was a lot simpler than what Dominique invested in the insignia. To Kaede, those badges and dark suits marked out those of her faction who were the most reliable and trustworthy, and the most capable--her elite soldiers. They were like Dominique, in that they had all seen the light and had defected from Soldats, sharing the same conviction as the French woman’s; that Soldats was a sinful organisation needing to be purified by fire and sword. Consequently all of Kaede’s elite soldiers lived up to the title. They were Soldats trained, making them the equivalent of a Special Forces military platoon where each member had diverse abilities--some were excellent tacticians and outstanding commanders, others flawless snipers and experts at evading notice, several were masters of unarmed combat and explosive wizards; the assortments were as plentiful as they were varied, skills from every walk of life wielded by people just as divergent. There were even a few historians and fencers; a couple of the second had invited themselves into Kaede’s training hall to watch her practice her kenjutsu forms once, muttering between themselves in a foreign tongue while scrutinising her katana’s strokes intently.

Strangely, every last person that made up Kaede’s elite detachment was female. But when considering that Dominique supervised the division and screened every new defector wishing to enlist with the utmost diligence to weed out possible Soldats spies trying to infiltrate their ranks, it was not that surprising. Dominique did have a low opinion of men that was quite widely known, and even though Kaede had never seen her being intimate with anybody, the snow-haired woman suspected her personal assistant’s taste in romantic companionship ran alike with hers, favouring the female persuasion. There was the possibility that Dominique was just a complete prude, but Kaede found that notion highly dubious with a Parisian woman like Dominique who emanated elegant sensuality from every fibre of her being no matter what the circumstances. Perhaps she was merely picky, or married to their mission of retribution. In any case, Kaede sincerely doubted she would ever see a man sporting the illustrious silver pin on his clothes.

While they were elite soldiers, the women converging briskly and portentously on Horiuchi also held a mantle that was greater than that. They currently belonged to Kaede’s personal bodyguard, a shadowing quartet that had been appointed to serve and protect her by a concerned Dominique at the commencement of their crusade against the scourge that was Soldats. Trusting the young woman’s welfare only to those whose loyalty to their cause and whose competency fulfilling the imperative task were above question, Dominique had decreed that the elite detachment’s primary role was to always safeguard Kaede’s life first and foremost beyond any other duty they might additionally be bundled with. But to make absolutely certain that she was being continuously looked after rather than merely in passing, the French national had ordered that at least four members of the elite Soldats renegade branch must accompany Kaede at all hours of the day and night regardless of what the snow-haired woman was doing, the sole exception being when she retired to her quarters where they instead stood vigilant outside her door to allow their charge her privacy.

It was all too much in Kaede’s opinion. She was not some delicate damsel needing to be coddled; she was a battle-hardened warrior with the spirit of vengeance on her side. Even so, Dominique had shooed away her protests about being babied, and four was the lowest sum of guards the young woman had been able to talk her overprotective assistant down to. Kaede reluctantly confessed that despite her objections she was fairly fond of Dominique’s doting, but she wished the older woman would give her a little more credit. It didn’t help that Big Brother behaved much the same, habitually having their old yakuza friends quietly tail her or escort her under the guise of keeping her company. Both Dominique and Big Brother knew what she was capable of and that she had been chosen to be an avenger; why did they persist pampering her? None of the guards they allotted to watch over her could even come near to matching her power. They were like wolves defending a dragon.

Kaede picked up soft breathy grunts of exertion behind her as her two dark clad protectors, unconcerned whether he had spinal damage or not, seized Horuichi by the arms and roughly hauled his face from the floor, the rest of his rag doll body closely following suit. His sagging, floppy bare feet squeaked against the wooden floorboards, skidding along in tow behind him like dead weights as the duo dragged him off to the training hall’s side door at the back of the room to see him disposed of. What that entailed precisely Kaede wasn’t wise to and hadn’t bothered enough to remedy that deficiency. Whatever happened to her ex-kenjutsu tutors, suffice to say that after they were bodily removed from her training hall she never had another opportunity to lay eyes on them again.

Not deigning to so much as glance over her shoulder at the activity taking place behind her, Kaede continued to stroll towards the front of the hall unperturbed. The pitter-patter of lively clapping coincided with her approaching footsteps, its source the small group of women gathered near the training hall’s front entrance ahead of her. One of their number was another of Kaede’s bodyguard, set a little but obvious distance apart from the other two women where she leaned casually with her back against the wall next to the room’s double doors. Her arms were folded below her breasts and her head was lowered, her eyes hidden behind the lenses of jet-black sunglasses, giving the erroneous and potentially fatal impression that she was asleep on her feet and oblivious to her surroundings. She was a foreigner, as were the two guards lugging Horiuchi off to the unknown behind Kaede and the fourth and final sentry of the quartet standing watch outside the room’s entrance. Three quarters of the elite Soldats deserters under Kaede’s flag hailed from overseas, representing ethnicities from all across the globe. Approximately half that called countries in western Europe home like their colleague Dominique; France, Spain, Germany, and Italy standing out as the prevailing native lands. Never before had Ishinomori Tower been so bustling with foreigners. But Kaede bore no prejudices against her non-Japanese allies; they were all comrades-in-arms, united for a singular righteous purpose. It was a glorious thing.

The applauding tapered off as Kaede joined the other two women of the group; the one responsible for the ovation stepping keenly forwards to meet her. Like the members of Kaede’s bodyguard, the woman in question was born outside of Japan, yet her distinctly oriental attire certainly suggested the contrary. A voluminous yukata complete with obi hung from her bare creamy shoulders, scarcely clinging as though just a touch would send the garment sliding entirely off her body to puddle about her feet clad in white tabi socks and zori sandals. Kaede knew the obi wrapped securely around the woman’s midriff would prevent such a calamity from happening--indeed, it was probably the only thing barring the yukata’s shameless descent to the floor--but without it she would have been risking a sudden total exposure of her feminine beauty at any moment she so much as breathed too hard. While the brazen arrangement of her clothing revealed a wide ‘V’ of beguiling cleavage deep enough to swallow anyone’s gaze, what it didn’t reveal was that beyond the woman’s shoulders, upper chest, and the narrow valley between her luscious and ample twin swells, she was just as naked underneath the yukata’s folds. Kaede was one of very few and select people who was privy to the private personal detail; after all, Claire regularly dressed and undressed in front of her, the latter normally to bare her body and all of its exquisite treasures to the snow-haired woman. Kaede was intimately familiar with every inch of that alluring form concealed and unconcealed by the enveloping yukata, and not only by sight but by touch and taste as well. Claire was her whore.

In truth, Claire could really be called Kaede’s concubine instead of being labelled a mere common tramp. She diligently tended to all of her mistress’s personal needs like washing and drying her, dressing and undressing her, and seeing to her general comfort as if she was a body servant… although she was more of a servant to Kaede’s body than other help typically was. As Claire’s title implied, in addition to ensuring that her mistress’s daily needs were catered to, another of her responsibilities was to gratify Kaede’s… other, even *more* personal needs. To Kaede’s chagrin, the pleasures of the flesh were a vice she had considerable trouble denying, a weakness she realised, but one that even her indomitable will could not withstand. However, she admitted she didn’t really try that hard to resist her desires that frequently led her to find succour in the arms of other women. Favoured by the gods she was, but Kaede was still human with a few yet to be conquered human frailties… some more tolerable than others. Besides, her weakness for female bedfellows was innocuous and taken care of by her concubines; it wasn’t as though it put Kaede’s campaign against Soldats in jeopardy.

Claire stood a couple of inches taller than Kaede, and her loose-fitting yukata couldn’t hide a build that was rather petite, the obi emphasising a waist that was even smaller than her mistress’s already slender own. Her slightly diminutive physique was hindered by a quite impressive muscle tone however, along with curves verging on voluptuous for her figure made more so by her tiny waist, her chest in particular prominent. Dark red hair akin to the colour of a ripe cherry, red wine, or congealed blood, fell in several plump and untidy spiralling ringlets to roughly a hand’s breadth past Claire’s shoulders, the two shortest framing a cute angelic or impish face--however one wanted to look at it--that seemed to never be long without a tickled smile upon it. A few stray bangs jutting out from the top of her head where the tapering ringlets began their swirls hung over eyes a duller shade of red, almost a subdued orangey-brown like a pair of unpolished garnets. Yet despite their tint Claire’s eyes had a naughtiness about them to go with her mischievous face. And naughty Claire could certainly be if her playful antics around Kaede, explicitly whist in her bedroom, were any judge. But there was something else Kaede occasionally glimpsed in her eyes… something that emphasised the imp in her--the demon inside--her roots as a sinner. Depravity of the body was Claire’s obvious sin, but this demon espied was of a different variety. Strange… but it could just be a figment of Kaede’s imagination. Dominique had done all of the arranging of the woman’s ‘services’ and had sworn to her that Claire was of the faithful. Kaede’s guardian would not see a snake share her bed.

Her adorable countenance made Claire appear young, and at a casual glance one could mistake her for a girl in her late teens. Like her perceived innocence, her real age slanted more towards the opposite end of the spectrum. Claire was in fact older than Kaede, in her early thirties, although her exact age was a mystery to the snow-haired woman. Claire had been warming her bed for a couple of months now, yet many things about the woman still were to Kaede; her race, her probably debauched background, even her family name. They were details she could easily find out by talking to Dominique, but she had no interest in them. She was not looking to be Claire’s friend, nor did she wish for the woman to be hers. Claire’s purpose was to perform as her concubine; to fulfil the function she was allotted. So long as her finer points did not intrude upon that duty or any of the other personnel’s in Ishinomori Tower, they were irrelevant.

In her spare moments spent in Claire’s company, Kaede sometimes did idly speculate on where her concubine was from, however. Her facial features marked her clearly as a westerner, as did her odd wielding of the Japanese language, the pronunciation of numerous words peculiar to Kaede’s ears. Kaede sometimes imagined that Claire was European, although she had no concrete basis for that presumption besides that most of the foreigners packing Ishinomori Tower’s halls came from that continent. She did however recall hearing the redhead mutter things under her breath in English every so often, too low to actually decipher but with recognisable heat, and thus the possibility that Claire originated from an English-speaking country had crossed the kenjutsu master’s mind. Nonetheless, at the end of the day Kaede’s ponderings were moot and remained what they always had been--idle.

Claire’s fat coils of ruby-red hair corkscrewing their way down from her head were striking, but it was the garish and graphic yukatas she wore that first drew the eye. Apparently having a penchant for traditional Japanese culture--or at least for the fashion at any rate--Claire was nary seen outside of Kaede’s quarters lacking a yukata on the verge of slipping from her shoulders, each one as extravagant and lurid as its predecessor. Red was forever a prevalent colour, although the shades did change, and the yukatas’ rich decorations encompassed every available square inch of fabric--often even the obi was involved. Subtle designs in the vein of a handful of falling cherry blossoms or a pair of birds in flight were notably absent in favour of sprawling hectic scenes featuring conflict of some kind; order versus chaos a principal theme. Today Claire’s yukata told the tale of a fierce battle waged between ancient fully armoured samurai brandishing katanas and the sporadic wakizashi, and burly malevolent oni of many sorts and shapes grinning wickedly while their fangs and talons put their enemies’ defences to the test. The yukata depicted a struggle unresolved, neither samurai nor oni giving the impression of having the upper hand, or that they would gain it anytime soon. It was another customary theme of all of Claire’s yukata pictorials; eternal stalemates between two opposing sides, the combatants locked in a war without end.

The broad, deep sleeves of Claire’s yukata flapped amid her quick movement towards Kaede, a samurai with raised sword bristling and a horned oni’s bulging muscles flexing. A cheery smile brightened her pretty face and washed a further five years from her youthful veneer, the beam for her mistress just as sycophantic as the clapping had been.

“A splendid performance,” Claire praised, adding predictable verbal accolades to her ingratiating routine at the same time she intercepted Kaede’s march, positioning herself to block the swordswoman’s path. “But one to be expected from a warrior of your calibre! Your expertise with a blade has been evinced to be unparalleled yet again.”

Kaede, unfazed by the obsequious behaviour, did not slow her stride and pressed onwards, Claire swinging her body aside smoothly to make way yet not missing a beat with her fawning talk. The head of the Ishinomori family expected to be treated with a healthy dose of deference from her underlings, but Claire’s toadying every so often bordered on patronising, her tone cavorting dangerously close to sarcastic. It was a very subtle bordering, but the objectionable trace of rebelliousness was there. The conduct was not considered by the kenjutsuka to be befitting in a subordinate, and rendered worse when that subordinate satisfied a function as intimate as the one Claire did. Kaede contemplated that she might have to put her sometimes disrespectful concubine firmly in her place someday--strict, defining discipline that the younger woman contemplated she possibly should have administered at the very beginning of their relationship--teaching her that her mistress was not ignorant to her condescending attitude, and that her position in the kenjutsu master’s life did not impart her any leniency from her stern and punishing hand.

Walking past Claire, Kaede came to a stop a short distance behind the redhead, standing in front of the last woman of the little group loosely assembled in the vicinity of the training hall’s chrome main entrance. The woman was the most subdued of all of the room’s occupants--other than Horiuchi, of course--but in a very different manner to the nearby guard’s relaxed alertness. Like the guard her head was lowered, but a cowed gaze was settled uneasily on the floor, sunken eyes rimmed below with dusky shadows numbly staring. The subjugated atmosphere smothering her was thick, heavy and oppressive; her bowed head, her hunched shoulders, her broken and deadened stare; all contributed to paint a bleak portrait of defeat and desolation, human misery at its deepest and darkest. She was how a servant was supposed to be: submissive and quiet. And a servant she was. Fumiko Morita had been serving Kaede for a long time, benefiting from several years of precision sculpting courtesy of her mistress that was responsible for shaping her into the painfully shy and subservient being she was today.

Fumiko was a young woman around Kaede’s age, comparable enough to have potentially been her classmate in high school back in the day, and reached about her height as well, standing virtually at eye-level with her mistress. But where Kaede’s slender physique had been toned to a trim muscular thanks to her life of martial pursuits, Fumiko’s slender form was just that--slender. While she was not bony by any means, she was quite lean, missing the well-rounded curves and generous bust of Claire. But that was not to say she was any less ravishing in her own fashion, or that she was bereft of shapely feminine lures, lures that Kaede most certainly enjoyed in as many ways as they could be enjoyed.

Fumiko was not second to her counterpart Claire in looks, either. She was tremendously pretty, blessed with a wholesome beauty like that of a fresh-faced country girl. Her pallid, sickly complexion of a hue that rivalled Kaede’s pale own and her worn-out and miserable appearance did diminish her splendour somewhat however, and coupled with her spare frame gave her an almost ghostly, wraithlike quality. Yet even then Kaede still considered Fumiko the most exquisite creature she had ever seen. From her light blue eyes as distinct as though they had been cut from azure crystal, to her lustrous dark green hair that flowed down in thick waves about her slim shoulders like a crimped mane of overlapping lush forest leaves, she was quite simply beautiful. Kaede reflected that Fumiko might very well have been the woman accountable for her deep appreciation of the female form just for simply being the marvellous example of feminine majesty she was. After all, Fumiko was the first woman--the first *person*--Kaede had ever been intimate with.

Contrasting Claire, Fumiko was not devoted to Kaede voluntarily. While Claire could be described as a concubine, the green-haired maiden was the closest match to a slave there was. Fumiko had not been recruited; she had been *enslaved*. The young downtrodden woman was a relic of Kaede’s stint in the Kanagawa Koutetsu, her finest and most cherished relic.

To settle an outstanding monetary debt to the yakuza clan’s cutthroat loansharks of a sum he could never hope to pay off himself, Fumiko’s father had consented to have his eldest daughter, a university student at the time, butchered and her organs harvested to later be sold on the black market. Kaede’s bosses in the Kanagawa Koutetsu decided not to immediately kill Fumiko however, instead electing to have some ‘fun’ with their new acquisition first before her trip to the human slaughterhouse. As it was, Kaede had stepped in before either foul fates could befall Fumiko, exploiting her respectable standing in the yakuza group--which had been mainly built on the substantial stack of dead bodies she had amassed during her career--to claim the previously damned woman as hers.

Make no mistake; Fumiko’s plight had not incited pity in Kaede. It was her unblemished beauty inside and out that had captured Kaede’s interest--her unspoiled virtue. To see a pure soul, a true saint in a world overrun with sinners, was a rarity. Too frequently where they consumed by the hateful environment they were forced to co-inhabit with their polar opposites in, their decency shining brightly like a star in the night’s sky and attracting the darkness that would close in around it and one day dim and distort that light, before snuffing it out altogether and replacing it with more shadows. Kaede had wanted to preserve that light, that beauty, and bottle it in a sense, keeping it for herself to admire.

Legally dead attributable to a forged death certificate and with her family having forsaken her, doubtless believing that certificate to be testifying the truth by now, Fumiko’s life was utterly in Kaede’s hands to do with as she desired, at the mercy of her every capricious whim. Fumiko was a slave until she truly did die, for only in death would she find freedom. Kaede owned her as someone owns a pet, feeding and clothing her and providing the living dead woman with shelter and care within the walls of her home, walls that were effectively those of a kennel.

No collar was visible around Fumiko’s neck, no binds restraining her hands and feet; there wasn’t a need. Acute drug addiction made up her chains, the finest of Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals’ outlawed products snorted up her nose or injected into her veins regularly every day. While Fumiko may dream of escape, her dependency on Kaede to supply her with her desperately craved-for banned substances kept her in line and malleable to her owner’s will. The costly drugs she was hooked on she could never afford to buy on the street--if she could even find a purveyor who sold the quality product she was accustomed to imbibing--and so all the prospects of escape presented at best were that of a harsher existence where Fumiko would be forced to scrape for a meagre income any way that she could to support her expensive habit. Her family would not help her; her own father had traded her life for money, after all. There was nowhere for Fumiko to go; her home, prison may it be, was wherever Kaede’s home was.

All those factors had their part in making Fumiko the perfect concubine in Kaede’s eyes, the perfect toy for her to play with, a saint whose esteemed purity she could test the endurance of and see for herself what the limits were before a saint chaste of heart and innocent in soul de-evolved into a sinner vile in heart and twisted in soul. Claire, for all her lovely charms, wasn’t really necessary; an extra treat after the main course. But Dominique believed she was, declaring that Kaede should have a ‘proper outlet for her lust’. Kaede was not one to ever spurn her guardian’s kind gifts, or not gifts that belonged in her bed at any rate, so she had graciously accepted Claire and while not quite welcoming her, had partaken of her services on many occasions. There was no danger of Claire usurping Fumiko’s special status with Kaede however; the innocent doll would always be the white-haired woman’s primary means in which to vent her primal desires.

Fumiko held out a fluffy white towel in somewhat unsteady hands to Kaede, her head staying down and her eyes remaining dropped to the floor and turned away from her mistress’s blood sprayed face, deference and fear glimmering with parallel uneasiness in their watery blue depths. Fumiko’s trembling extended to her whole body; her slim shoulders delicately shivering; and escalated ever so slightly as Kaede’s hand neared to take the proffered towel, her muscles tensed to such rigidity it was as though they were about to shake apart under the strain.

Fumiko clearly relaxed once Kaede took the towel from her without incident, her chest collapsing as she released the breath she had been holding. Kaede supposed her slave had a right to be petrified of her when bearing in mind what ill-treatment she had put the young woman through in the name of her experiment, an experiment that had been ongoing now for more than a few years with indignity and torture heaped upon indignity and torture. And yet underneath her wretched and whitewashed veneer Fumiko’s goodness had survived, her heart still pure and her soul unsullied. Her body was withering, her mind shattering… but her virtuous essence remained unharmed. In Kaede’s eyes, Fumiko was strong. She had the spirit of a warrior.

Kaede scrubbed her face clean of Horiuchi’s blood and of her light sheen of built up sweat, and then ran the towel down the back of her neck, mopping up more droplets of cool perspiration. Before she could do much more however, a pair of hands materialised over her shoulders and took the white towel now grimy with maroon smudges from her. Kaede felt the towel drape about her neck and shoulders, followed by firm hands massaging her recently exercised muscles through it, wiping skin as they went. It felt good, soothing after giving over her body to her furious spirit, the strong kneading fingers penetrating deep and their motions loosening muscles in readiness for another bout of training or combat, whenever either may come.

“Now that you have soundly trounced Mr. Horiuchi,” Claire intoned from behind Kaede, the owner of the hands, “I presume it is time for another…?” The warm breath belonging to her words spoken close to Kaede titillated the nape of the white-haired woman’s neck, very nearly triggering an electric shiver to tickle her spine that would have had nothing to do with the sweat chilling her body. Kaede masked the affects of Claire’s breath teasing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise and of her concubine’s rubbing hands liquefying her muscles well, aloofness her cover. She stood there stoically, immobile and with a shrewd smile frozen on her features while Claire tended to her, for all intents and purposes appearing oblivious to the redhead’s stimulating ministrations.

“No. Enough,” Kaede murmured quietly, partly in reply to Claire and partly to herself. There would be no further sparring against any more kenjutsu masters in the safe confines of this training hall. A war was being waged outside its secure walls; skills would be honed in true duels to the death from now on, perfection with the sword found in the ordeals of the battlefield; be they blade against blade or blade against gun.

Under Kaede’s seemingly eyeless stare owing to her bangs and adopted indifference, Fumiko nervously clutched at the front of her sky blue sundress while keeping her head down, wrinkling the thin, virtually gossamer material in two tight, clammy, and quivering fists. The dress was a sky blue that moulded to her trim frame like a glove to a hand, accentuating the shape of her willowy curves such that they were all the more gratifying to behold in spite of their narrowness. Kaede had picked out the dress for Fumiko to wear herself, as she did the captivating woman’s entire wardrobe. It was to be expected that she considered the dress enriching to her pet’s natural beauty; it was the core purpose of all the outfits she chose for Fumiko. Beautiful creatures should be wrapped in beautiful things.

Kaede lifted her bandage-swathed hands and presented them before the apprehensive Fumiko’s wilted gaze, trusting that having a task to carry out would pose as a distraction and put the frightened lamb a little more at ease. A tentative blue gaze slid from the floor to consider Kaede’s hands, flitting uneasily between both back and forth, as if she was scared to let her eyes loiter on her mistress’s death-dealing hands overly long. However, Fumiko was implicitly aware of what was required of her and that dawdling or refusal to comply would be frowned upon--and frowned upon *hard*--thus her dithering persisted for only a couple of seconds before her fear of punishment superseded her fear of touching her subjugator’s hands, hands that had disciplined her on countless occasions through her and Kaede’s years together.

Fumiko’s hands cupped Kaede’s right one as they would cup a ceremonial goblet or prized trophy; carefully and with grave veneration. Kaede’s left hand fell to her side as Fumiko’s graceful fingers sought out the start of the bandages binding its equivalent, light fingertips smoothing and pitter-pattering across the white mesh. The green-haired maiden’s touch was soft and gentle and yet possessed an oddly warm trait, and Kaede could not help but be lulled by it. It was a simple touch in comparison to Claire’s hands working her neck and shoulders, but it did much more for her than the massage could ever do.

Kaede could feel her hand beating rhythmically within Fumiko’s two, throbbing in time with her heart, as if she were somehow deeply aware of every drop of blood pumping in every vessel criss-crossing through it. She longed for the bandages to be removed, for the numbing buffer to be stripped off and the tactile sensation heightened, experienced as it should be with no restrictions, skin on skin. Her breathing was sluggish and level, held rapt along with her senses, her being concentrated on her hand; ensnared. Everything else seemed to become muted, the peripheral slowly dimming; Claire’s pompous voice flattering her on her decision to discontinue sparring with fellow sword masters, the redhead’s kneading fingers, the rasp of the towel on her flesh, the chill of her sweat on her body; it all seemed to fade and become part of a dispensed with background, overlooked ahead of an infinitely more compelling attraction--the caresses of an angel. Fumiko commanded divinity at her fingertips, the quintessence of Heaven contained in her every touch. It was calming to Kaede, a taste of the tranquil. For the time Fumiko touched her Kaede’s personal crusade didn’t seem so important any more, her furious war against Soldats all but forgotten and her lust for vengeance gone as if it had never been. There was no need to fight and kill, no need to roar and rampage, no need sate the desire to avenge in her heart. Kaede was at peace with herself and the world around her.

But peace never lasts. It was the concept of dreamers and weaklings, blinkered idiots who did not see the world for what it during was--a constant battlefield where conflicts continually arose, hearts and minds and bodies pitted each other. Kaede mused that there was truth in the scenes Claire’s yukata’s illustrated. Kaede’s peace was ruined in this instance while Fumiko was unwrapping the last of the bandages around her left hand and Claire was swabbing her back with the towel pushed up inside her tank top. That ruin came by way of a curt succession of raps on the reverse side of the room’s front doors, booming thumps inside the cavernous training hall. Kaede instantly stirred from her blissful torpor, her body jerking stiffly to attention as recollection of exactly who she was returned in a deluge of memories and emotions; that old bitter vendetta, that old hot-blooded fury, and that old deep-seated hatred.

Kaede turned her head towards the double doors just as they swung open, a familiarly uniformed Soldats renegade appearing between them with her hands resting on the handles. The elite soldier tilted her head in a crisp nod upon her entry--a nod respectful for Kaede’s position and apologetic for the interruption. The snow-haired warrior accepted the gesture through a stony visage, her smile cold now that her sacred duty was restored in her mind to consume her every waking thought once more.

“Pardon the intrusion Lady Kaede,” the guard said, standing in the fissure between the hall’s open doors and with her hands still on their handles. She was another foreigner, and spoke in clipped French. Not all of the Soldats defectors who wore the prestigious silver badge knew Japanese, thus the many who did not had resorted to drawing on what French they were conversant in to communicate with Kaede. It was fortunate that Kaede was very articulate in wielding the language, the upshot of abundant lessons with Dominique as a young girl and recurrent chats with her former teacher using the tongue while growing older. “But Mr. Ryosuke has returned from his trip.”

Kaede gave an immediate start at the mention of her sole surviving and dearest blood relation, and a moment later a softer, warmer aura overtly took nest around her. The incessant smile on her face lit up tenfold, icy and sinister no longer but radiant, a smile that was all ingenuous joy simply at hearing that a loved one had come home. Gone was the seething crusader; that element of Kaede receding from the fore yet again, diluted in an instant to expose the adoring little sister shrouded deep underneath.

“Big Brother?” Kaede said, very nearly gushing. “R-Really?” She tried to keep her tone level, but the excitement quivering just below her words was clear, so close to the surface that it caused her voice to quaver also. She so wanted to believe the elite guard’s news but needed to be totally sure that her elder brother had in fact returned to Yokohama, to the sheltering fortifications of Ishinomori Tower, and not to mention still with life in his body. Kaede *had* to see him. See him with her own two eyes and verify for herself that he was back and all right.

Big Brother had been away for so long--too long. Away on an important mission for the pious cause, yes, but still for too long. Kaede had missed him terribly, her loneliness compounding as each day went by bearing no word from him either good or bad, and her mounting worry had fared no better with the lack of reports. Big Brother’s friends who had stayed behind in Japan had tried to reassure her that he could look after himself, that he was an adept soldier, a battle-hardened warrior like her, but it had not done much to lessen her concern. France had been a distance place to Kaede where anything could happen to her older brother while he was there, in the middle of a notorious bastion of Soldats, the land swarming with the enemy. The fretting sister had known that her brother was not entirely alone in the hornet’s nest with Vincent to watch his back, the Chinese triad associate an accomplished soldier in his own right, but they had still been merely two against innumerable opposition. The pair had bet on their small number being what would let them slip inside France’s borders and roam within them undetected, however Kaede had known that there was little that escaped Soldats’ myriad of ever-vigilant eyes. Kaede and her supporters had gouged most of those eyes from the lands encircling their headquarters in Yokohama, but Kanagawa prefecture was a place unique in that regard. Soldats’ eyes remained very wide open in every other locale across the globe.

But that was all moot, now. Big Brother and Vincent had been in the thick of enemy territory unaided yet had apparently returned with new war stories to recount about their exploits there. Kaede didn’t even really care if her brother’s assignment had been fruitful or not; she just wanted--needed--to see him. No, that was not completely true. Dominique had coveted that old French tome quite badly, and had seemed to believe it critical to the achievement of their goals. Therefore a part of Kaede did hope that Big Brother had been successful, if just to please her cherished guardian. Even the prospect that the book would somehow assist them in instigating Soldats’ fall was secondary to that. A very close secondary, but secondary nonetheless.

“Take me too him,” Kaede half demanded and half implored, not waiting for confirmation to her earlier inquiries from the guard. The young woman took an impulsive step towards the black clad foreigner and the training hall’s front doors, forsaking the nurturing of Claire and Fumiko. The first concubine shot her mistress an exasperated glower as she was forced to hurriedly jerk the towel out from underneath the back of Kaede’s tank top. Claire then crossed her arms huffily, the towel suspended between a thumb and forefinger, and twisted her lips in displeasure at being totally ignored--the equivalent of a sullen but adorable pout for her cute face. Fumiko on the other hand slumped to her hands and knees, Kaede’s unexpected movement making her drop the bandages she had just unravelled from the kenjutsu master’s left hand. Her hands scrambled frantically on the wooden floorboards like a pair of ashen spiders for the strips of white fabric, her rather wiry fingers their skittering legs, while she whispered a deflated apology. When Fumiko had finally gathered the bandages she clasped them to her chest and sat upright on her knees, lingering there genuflect on the floor looking as meek as ever. But Kaede did not pay heed to the differing actions of her pets, the two women all but unseen. She had only one interest at the moment. “I must see my brother now,” she reiterated, this time with a dash more demand bolstering her voice.

“Not in that state you aren’t!”

Dominique’s throaty yet dignified voice sliced through the air of the training hall as sharply and finely as Kaede’s katana would, seizing the attention of all, in particular the elite guard holding the room’s doors open. The guard spared not a second in yielding a path for her division’s first lieutenant, releasing the door handles and bowing low in a European fashion, right arm across her chest with her palm over her heart, as if in reverence to a monarch. She then slinked out of the room as the tall and regal woman marched into it at a vigorous stride, Dominique’s long legs sheathed in diaphanous black stockings making short work of the distance separating her and Kaede. Dominique stopped in front of her charge, the younger woman rendered diminutive by her superior height, and Kaede was granted a whiff of the stunning French beauty’s aromatic perfume as it wafted over her carried by the draft of the curt arrival, a piquant bouquet that enriched the air and excited the senses. “Look at you,” Dominique tutted, her hands on her well-formed hips, “you can’t see your brother like that! You’re a mess!”

Kaede’s mouth screwed up into a disgruntled pout that was a contest for Claire’s as she glanced down at herself, noting her scruffy and very casual exercise outfit, with her tank top stippled in places by her seeped-through sweat; odorous sweat that she felt still clinging to her body while it slowly dried. She wondered if Dominique could smell the result of her workout above her perfume, very much hoping that the fragrance was heady enough to mask her musk and not offend the older woman’s delicate nose. Kaede hoped that there wasn’t any blood still left crusting in her hair or caked on her face. Yet despite her, she had to admit, plainly beleaguered appearance she wasn’t going to give in that easily. “Aww…. But Big Brother…” Kaede whined petulantly, the only means she could think of to assail her guardian’s sentiments and with any luck inspire her sympathy.

“No!” Dominique said with no-nonsense and a dismissing wave of her hand, derailing Kaede’s hopes. “You must bathe and dress appropriately this instant. You don’t want your brother’s first sight of you in all these weeks to be of you dirty and dishevelled, reeking of perspiration, do you?”

Kaede sighed softly to herself and inclined her head slightly in tepid assent. She knew when she was beat, and defeat came habitually when trying to oppose her strict guardian. Dominique also held great stock in physical appearance and personal hygiene; picking up on the pungent smell emanating from Kaede must have been the clincher. Kaede had just known she would notice it. Dominique always noticed *everything*.

“No…” Kaede said resignedly.

“Yes? What was that?” Dominique persisted, her tone dryly expectant, wanting certain obedience.

“I said no…” Kaede restated a little louder, but no less lackadaisically.

Dominique smiled affably; her wish fulfilled; and then snapped her fingers at Claire, the signal turning into a point at Kaede. “Claire, attend to her,” she ordered tersely with a voice used to being obeyed.

Claire threw Dominique a withering look, but a split second later the redhead was all bright smiles. She unfolded her arms, slinging the towel over a forearm, and then clapped her hands together enthusiastically. “Yes, come along now Lady Kaede, let’s get you all washed up for your big brother,” she said cheerfully, ushering Kaede towards the doors with a gentle hand cupping the snow-haired woman’s left elbow.

Fumiko, still kneeling on the floor, gasped in alarm as she realised Claire and her mistress were leaving and rushed to her feet, gliding warily past Dominique with her typical lowered gaze and after the pair, trailing a few timid steps behind them. Kaede’s personal bodyguard filed out after Fumiko, the two that had disposed of Horuichi back from their errand, and once they had cleared the hall they moved smartly to loosely encircle the trio, ever wary of the surroundings and those who dwelled within them, irrespective their station.

“But… but what about Big Brother?” Kaede asked, troubled, casting a look back over her shoulder at Dominique who had remained in the training hall.

“Oh, not to worry. He’ll still be here after you have bathed and dressed,” Dominique placated as she watched Kaede and her entourage depart. “There is no hurry.”

Kaede nodded, feeling better thanks to her guardian’s sensible assurances. Her step lightened as she was led away to the baths, eager to be washed and pampered to sweet-smelling perfection before meeting her brother.

“No hurry at all…” Dominique murmured quietly to herself, out of Kaede’s earshot. “‘Big Brother’ can wait.”

******

Wait. Ryosuke had finally set foot on his native Japanese soil once again, and with that blasted book of Dominique’s in hand no less, and she made him wait. He hadn’t been anticipating an open-armed reception from his nemesis by any means, but the cold shoulder treatment was mystifying and not to mention frustrating in the extreme. However patience was one of Ryosuke’s fortes; he had stoically tolerated Dominique’s venomous presence corrupting his family and plaguing his home for years now after all. He could dance to her tune--or rather sit to it, as was the case here--as gracefully as if he actually relished it, whatever that tune may be amended as it often was, the rhythm altered by the gaijin’s mercurial caprices. But one day this lithe dancer would impassively gambol to not another single beat of his musician’s drum, one day he would find a way, an opportunity, to safely silence his foil’s music decisively; permanently. But today was not that day. So Ryosuke sat. And he waited.

Ryosuke had been notified upon his arrival at Ishinomori Tower that Kaede was ‘engaged with a prior commitment’ for the time being, and ‘requested that he wait’. Neither his sister’s words nor the truth. Knowing Kaede, if she’d had her way she would have come barrelling towards him hours ago, delivering the warm and eager welcome Ryosuke would have much preferred over the brush off he had received so far. It was obvious that Dominique was responsible for the forced wait. Kaede was another dancer to the French woman’s melody, but the music affected her differently, like that of a Siren’s enrapturing song. Deplorably Dominique had relegated Ryosuke’s little sister to her trusting puppet, and Kaede didn’t seem to be remotely aware that she was being readily led about by the mere crook of her assistant’s finger. Kaede was known to suffer from simple-mindedness sometimes however, and her affection for Dominique as… as whatever she viewed her as--surrogate parental figure, perhaps?--had probably blinded her to the older woman’s arrant yet sly manipulation of her. That deep emotional attachment of Kaede’s to her devious tyrant made severing the grip Dominique had on her a very grim if not hopeless endeavour for Ryosuke, especially when taking his sister’s delicate mindset into account.

The compounding traumas of having both her father and mother ripped out of her life before their time, and perhaps the violent manner in which they were taken as well, had seemed to inflict equally compounding psychological damage on Kaede, lucidity decaying away through the never-healing mental scar. Kaede wasn’t the same sister Ryosuke had known and grown up with as a young boy. In days so long ago that girl had existed, and now his memory of what she had been like then--her innocent laughs and sunny smiles, gentle touches and gentler disposition--had blurred radically to an indistinct smudge of vague images and outlines. A terrible loss, and one he mourned, interred deep in a hardened heart. However, enough memory persisted within that smudge for Ryosuke to recognise that something was very… wrong… with Kaede. But it didn’t take a close sibling of hers to discern that unsettling fact. It was like some unknown malignant entity had taken up residence in his once sweet younger sister, twisting her, pulling apart her innocent and kind nature and warping it into something else, something vile and wicked, a hideous mockery of the compassionate soul she had once been. Call that entity what you will; a monster, an evil spirit, a demon, a devil--it was irrelevant. The distortion of Kaede’s heart and mind was done, the corruption complete and seemingly irreparable. Now Ryosuke’s sister was a sadistic fanatic, prone to excessive outbursts of anger and beset with mad delusions. It pained Ryosuke to see her that way. But who was he to say anything about Kaede’s transformation, really. They had both changed inside, become darker, jaded. All children lose their innocence when touched by the outside world. An inevitability of growing up.

Regardless of her mounting insanity, her escalating violent eruptions and viciousness, Ryosuke still loved Kaede. Kaede was still his little sister, the only family he had left. He would *always* care for her and protect her. For those reasons and her fragile state of mind, Ryosuke had spared her the truth about their mother and Dominique’s illicit relationship and consequent betrayal of their father, and of his suspicions that they’d had Shinichi Ishinomori murdered, his convenient fatal car accident likely a formulation of foul intent. Ryosuke worried what affect the revelations would have on her, the stress of them a liable threat to her tenuous hold on what measure of sanity she had left. That Dominique was the most trusted and closest person in Kaede’s life after--or was that before, now…?--Ryosuke himself also quieted his tongue; the treachery of his younger sister’s adored personal assistant and confidante likely enough to smash her mind beyond repair, the third and final trauma a blow to destroy it outright. Kaede had borne enough harm for one lifetime; Ryosuke would be the shield saving her from any more emotional anguish, as he ought to be being her older brother, even if that meant acting as a shield for Dominique as well, keeping her past deceitful sins to himself for his sister’s sake. Ryosuke would even go so far as to defend Dominique’s life from harm if it were threatened; as long as Kaede felt the way she did about the traitorous gaijin he would swallow his hate down like so much rising bile and see the woman protected.

But this arrangement would last only as long as Kaede’s fondness for Dominique did. The instant their rapport waned, soured, Ryosuke would set upon Dominique with the alacrity of a goaded dragon snapping at a noxious viper slithering insolently in its lair. He just needed a single opening. He would see to it that Dominique would have no chance to evade his vengeful bite. The start of all of Kaede’s dire ills led back to her by some route, roundabout or in a straight line, but every course pointing out damning guilt. Kaede’s broken condition was the result of Dominique’s poisonous meddling; she was the lone person to be blamed for all… *this*. Ryosuke had no love for Soldats, the murderers of his mother, but it was Dominique who was primarily accountable for Hikaru Ishinomori’s demise and her daughter’s psychosis. It wasn’t much; it wouldn’t bring back his light-hearted and happy little sister, it wouldn’t bring back their parents, it wouldn’t mend their mother’s wrecked image in his eyes, but Ryosuke would see Dominique punished for the grievous wounds she had caused his now tattered family, wounds that still bled to this day. Sooner or later he would see her dead. Simply that--*dead*.

A shifting of clouds in the sky that Ishinomori Tower scraped unveiled the formerly blotted sun, light intense to Ryosuke’s eyes sifting through the spaces left by the thick grey blinds hanging over the far-stretching window that made one complete wall of the aptly named waiting area outside Kaede and Dominique’s executive offices; the wall facing the couch where the white-haired man sat with apparent aplomb despite having been snubbed, leaning forwards in his seat with his forearms resting on his knees. Ryosuke’s reaction to the pain suddenly aching behind his eyes was robotic, a hand going inside the front of his overcoat and pulling out his round blue-tinted sunglasses, putting them on before becoming a picture of cool patience once again.

The thick ancient tome that he and Vincent had successfully smuggled out of France after a lengthy and trying hunt in Paris was a weighty presence inside his black overcoat, pressing against the already heavy steel plates sown into the front of the armoured garment. A weighty presence in more ways than one. Ryosuke still didn’t know quite what to make of the book, this… ‘Langonel’s Manuscript’. That Dominique hadn’t rushed to meet him and claim the book was bemusing, considering how adamant she had been concerning its worth. Maybe obtaining the tome had truly only been ploy to get him out of her hair for a while. Or perhaps Dominique didn’t want to appear too eager to get her hands on the tome, adopting a back flip of her previous stance. Or her intentions of having Ryosuke wait like a flouted fool could simply be to further annoy him, adding just a final little bit of irritation to an irritating assignment.

Ryosuke couldn’t say for sure what Langonel’s Manuscript’s importance or Dominique’s need for it--if there was a need--was. A thumb-through appraisal of the parchment-like pages of the tome on the flight back to Japan had unearthed nothing really of interest printed within, merely gibberish penned in French. ‘Les Soldats’ had been referred to several times, but the prose was in the style of obscure poetry, reading like an abstruse yet epic ballad and accompanied by illustrations drawn in the European middle-ages format, castles and knights with moats and swords abounding, thick dark lines defining their vividly coloured forms as if replicas of stained glass windows in a church consecrated to war. If there was anything of value in the book, then Dominique alone knew the secrets to finding it.

The eruption of a long, loud, and laboured sigh of acute distaste and boredom next to Ryosuke signalled that Vin, who was sitting beside him suffering Dominique’s rebuff just as he was, was due for another aggravated rant of his, one that would likely be a near exact duplication of the rant he had just moaned out several minutes prior… and a duplication of the rant several minutes prior to that one as well. Vin had the trying tendency of repeating himself when irked--which was unfortunately frequently--a sort of nagging complaining, a reoccurring whine about whatever petty irritations were bothering him. Dominique certainly wasn’t the only person who exercised Ryosuke’s stubborn patience. But Ryosuke wanted Vin with him, flaws and all, and now especially. Dominique truly seemed to despise the triad affiliate, her hostility towards Vin merely being in her presence unmistakable in spite of her toil to uphold a low-key exterior façade, and that was reason enough to keep the man by his side. Anything to give Ryosuke an edge over his nemesis.

“I still don’t get why *I* have to be here,” Vin griped, kicking his left leg that was crossed over his right rather vigorously. His arms were folded behind his head where was he slouched on the couch beside Ryosuke, and his eyes were dusky and listless from jetlag, though hooded with plain disdain. His watery gaze that clouded the amber in it seemed to find fault with everything they saw, the disgruntled grimace to his lips rising into a sneer every few moments.

Vin’s attire perhaps played a role in his sour mood. Ryosuke had demanded they proceed directly to Ishinomori Tower and Kaede after his and Vin’s flight from Paris had touched down, giving his partner very little time to freshen himself up. Vin still had on his black suit pants, shirt, and tie, rumpled and creased now from too much wear. But his jacket that had been soaked through and then encrusted with his drying blood in one spot courtesy of a bullet graze had been exchanged for a bright red substitute, reasonably kempt from spending time in one of his suitcases though affected by having to endure the lengthy plane journey. His clothes were nowhere near his usual standards of tidiness, something that was probably feeding his displeasure further. The arrangement of his red and black garments was not so excruciating to behold either, the two colours harmonised in actual fact. Perhaps that was the genuine cause of Vin’s ill temper; that his outfit was not gaudy enough.

“I mean, why do I have to deliver that book along with you? You don’t need me for that!” Vin continued to protest. “What am I supposed to do, hold it too as you hand it over?” He scoffed, indicating what he thought of that idea. “And frankly Ryochan, and don’t take offence or anything, but your sister gives me the creeps. There’s something eerily disturbing about not ever being able to see someone’s eyes….” His voice turned contemplative trailed off, and Ryosuke believed--or maybe just hoped--he would remain silent for a while keeping his thoughts to himself. But Ryosuke rarely had good luck.

“She sure is hot, though,” Vin suddenly said in a faraway tone that made Ryosuke look at him sidelong past his sunglasses--warning violet. “Ah, not that I have any designs on her, you understand,” he hurriedly clarified, realising what he had blurted. “Like I said, she gives me the creeps.” Vin became flustered once again, an abrupt inhalation. “Not that that’s really bad either!” he assured in his next breath, before sighing and calming when Ryosuke didn’t react beyond turning his gaze away from him in apathy. Vin had nothing to fear from Ryosuke. He did not take umbrage at his partner’s remarks; Kaede *was* creepy. But it wasn’t her fault. It was *hers*.

“Then there’s Dominique,” Vin went on after a moment, his whining regaining its lost steam. Dominique, the person where the fault lied with. Whatever criticism Vin had to say about her Ryosuke would wholeheartedly condone and concur with. “That stuck-up bitch barely even acknowledges me! She looks at me as if she’s wondering whether to plunge a knife into my guts or not. I can practically feel the point pricking between my shoulder blades when I turn my back to her. I wouldn’t put it past her to casually backstab me like that, either. Feh!” Vin shook his head in disgust, scowling darkly to himself. But he then sighed in resignation, his indignation seeming to evaporate with his released breath. “I guess she’s no different from most of the women around here, though. Look at them over there. Acting so high and mighty.”

Ryosuke let his eyes focus on his surroundings and his mind concentrate on what they were seeing, truly registering the room around him and all of its details instead of viewing it in vague, hazy contours. It was a familiar locale to him, one he could map with his eyes shut. It was a room in his home after all; it didn’t matter that his home happened to be a multi-storey skyscraper. The waiting area was as austere as the hundreds of other rooms that comprised Ishinomori Tower, piled on top of one another and making the building live up to its name. Brushed steel was the pervasive motif, also widespread throughout the rest of the tower, the walls all silvery blocks spaced with narrow horizontal recesses between. The floor was night skies streaked with lightning; black tiles shot through with white; and hard enough that boot heels clicked on it. A large reception desk sat in the first half on the room, off to the right side by the entrance with its back to the wide window doubling as a wall. It was a gentle arc of pale wood with a chrome top surface and polished finish, styled ascetically to match its stern environment. Another desk sat in the rear half of the room, the reception desk’s smaller brother, adjacent to the double doors barring the way to Dominique’s office. That desk was a security checkpoint, with an ebon metal locker mounted on the span of wall behind it, the container of several heavy-duty armaments that were definitely not regular corporate paraphernalia. The remainder of the waiting area was occupied with a neat layout of black leather couches and armchairs, and squat square coffee tables of the same pale wood as the security and reception desk.

In the centre of the room overlooking everything else was a sculpture cast in iron and painted slate grey, though with its coarse exterior and colour it could be misjudged as dark granite. It stood on a shiny black square base edged with dull gold; a shapeless blob on a pedestal stretching out at its onlookers. Ryosuke didn’t know what it was supposed to be or supposed to represent. It was conceptual art or some such; the sort his mother used to think was fascinating and aesthetically attractive. He had never learned why. To Ryosuke, his mother’s feelings, her thoughts and motivations, would always be just like that sculpture--an unfathomable chaotic mass, alien in form and feature. Beyond his understanding.

Ryosuke was also instinctively aware of everybody and anybody that dwelled in the room with him, regardless of where his eyes or mind may be. Even in one’s home one should never relax their guard. But then Ryosuke’s home had been infested with unwanted visitors who had taken up permanent residence. Anybody else with any sense would remain on their strictest guard too.

Ryosuke trailed Vin’s discontented glower across the expanse of the room to where a soft hubbub of female voices came from. A gaggle of women dressed immaculately in what Vin called ‘power suits’ inhabited the rear half of the waiting area, distinctly segregated from where Ryosuke and Vin were seated with the abstract sculpture the unofficial border. The black-clad women had the gall to treat this room as their own personal lounge, a place where they could go to unwind and commune in when they did not have any pressing duties to fulfil. It was a popular haunt for most of them, perhaps because it was as close as they could get to their leader’s office. That leader being Dominique, of course.

Scanning his gaze over the dozens of generally foreign women socialising demurely, Ryosuke felt the dull throbbing beginnings of a migraine drumming against the inside of his skull. There were so many of them now, dozens indeed--dozens upon dozens. Their numbers had started out tiny, five or six at most, but as the campaign against Soldats raged on they had inflated to more than a hundred, and were still rising. Over a hundred invaders in his family’s home, spreading like vermin. They were all women; not so odd when considering that man-hater Dominique had done the recruiting. They were also somehow related to her, either sympathisers of their opposition against Soldats or friends of hers. Which exactly didn’t really matter; it was enough to know that they were loyal only to their own flock and Dominique who headed it. They did obey Kaede’s orders--reiterated through Dominique, unsurprisingly--but Ryosuke had an inkling that they complied because it suited them to do so, not out of any sense of allegiance. Ryosuke watched them with a suspicious eye, wary that they would turn upon his sister if the tide of the war against Soldats ever did.

Ryosuke had to admit that the women were frighteningly good at whatever assignment they performed, however. Be it manning the security stations guarding the most sensitive locations in Ishinomori Tower, coordinating strikes against Soldats safehouses and businesses, or participating in those strikes themselves, they did their job with cool efficiency and superior competency. Garbed in black suits like uniforms as they were and with their no-nonsense attitude towards anything they did and everyone outside their clique, the women were almost like government agents belonging to some war-torn country. Maybe they were for all Ryosuke knew.

One would think Ryosuke would be appreciative of the women’s effectiveness and skill in matters of combat--especially when a small squad of the elite force had been posted as Kaede’s bodyguard, in charge of her personal welfare--but his mistrust of them precluded any such laudable sentiments. He was in fact opposed to the outsiders being assigned to work so closely to his sister and functioning in so significant a role as bodyguard--it was grim as it was already, the way they spearheaded the majority of their operations to lay low Soldats instead of their own household soldiers doing the job. The Ishinomori group’s forces had been demoted to menial guard drudgery and worse, fodder to bleed and be sacrificed for the benefit of Dominique’s cohorts to triumph. It positively *infuriated* Ryosuke for his family’s soldiers to be… *used* like that, exploited as if they were nothing more than meat shields to soak up bullets and blades, his brothers-in-arms sent off to slaughters that were completely unjustified. Losses were heavy among his brothers as to be anticipated being mistreated as they were, while those of Dominique’s side had suffered less than a handful of recorded fatalities. True, her faction had the tools and the talent to utilise those tools expertly, their weaponry on par with military arsenal and the training to match, but the gap between casualty figures was far too wide. Ryosuke was losing his friends, people who had trusted Kaede and their family, people who had trusted *him*. Something had to be done. Kaede wouldn’t listen; Dominique had her too wrapped around her little finger. It was up to Ryosuke. He would do something to stop the wasteful bloodshed of his brothers. Just what that something would be however, was a question he had yet to find an answer to.

The neatly dressed and primly composed women ignored Ryosuke and Vin in the commandeered waiting area for the most part; one or two of them only occasionally shooting them unwelcome frowns that suggested they go elsewhere… and soon. But the antagonistic vibes radiating from across the room at the two men were strong and glaring. Ryosuke’s distinguished position in the Ishinomori group was practically meaningless to Dominique’s faction; he was granted the barest respect and courtesy, with their underlying animosity for him very thinly veiled if at all. They took after their charming commander in that regard.

“No matter what I do or what I say, every single one of those women either ignore me like I’m not there and I just happen to be talking to myself, or they treat me like some mangy stray mutt nuzzling at their crotch, with a slap to my snout and kick to my ribs looming,” Vin went on. “Not one, not *one* of them has ever expressed even the remotest level of interest. At first I thought I was wearing bad cologne or something, or that it was some bizarre westerner thing, but even the Asians among them behave the same. Prudes, the lot of them. And probably all celibate too, I bet. I wouldn’t put it past them.” He sighed once again, but it was closer to a growl of frustration. Vin wasn’t accustomed to his fine looks and overt but entrancing advances flopping, and flopping so awfully at that.

Vin sullenly averted his bleary eyes from Dominique’s black uniformed storm troopers, tearing them away with such force one would think they had been stuck. “I hate this place,” he muttered to himself under his breath.

The gleaming chrome doors that led to the hallway outside the waiting area swung open smoothly and silently on their well-lubricated hinges, admitting a man and increasing the male population in the room, though still leaving them hugely outnumbered. However, Ishinomori Tower’s total inhabitants tipped tremendously in favour of the fairer sex lately.

The man’s entry drew the deadened violet eyes of Ryosuke, as well as many other eyes he expected, eyes with less than hospitable sheens to them. But the man ignored them all and the women they belonged to, zeroing in on Ryosuke instead. With a distracted wave of his hand he forestalled the receptionist’s approaching inquiry, her mouth that had been open with the words on the tip of her tongue snapping closed belligerently. The woman staffing the reception desk threw a miffed glare in his direction, but all it met was his disinterested back. This seemed to anger the receptionist even more, the man leaving her fuming wordlessly. She wasn’t a member of Dominique’s faction; dressed instead like a typical office lady, but the black swathed militants had that sort of affect on a lot of the other women in Ishinomori Tower. Their enmity was apparently infectious.

The man was Ryosuke’s age yet seemed older, more worn--rougher around the edges. Although he was dressed in a suit and shirt, navy and inky blue respectively, he had that certain look about him that betrayed a harsh background--he was no cultured gentleman. That his clothes were slightly slovenly on his scrawny frame didn’t improve his image; his shirt was hanging out over his pants and unbuttoned a little too far down from the collar, displaying a gold chain-like necklace looping low on his bare chest. More gold jewellery sparkled on his fingers and wrists, heavy rings and heavier thick bracelets, gaudy enough to be on par with Vin’s fashion sense and the rings bulky enough to lend extra power to his punches; knuckleduster equivalents. He looked like a thug who would always be a thug, a gangster right down to his bones, and one who could talk more fluently with his fists than he could with his mouth. A gangster who would probably *prefer* to talk with his fists.

And the people who thought that would be right. Ryosuke knew this man--Ken Ushijima. He was old school yakuza, and a comrade from the Kanagawa Koutetsu. A brother. A friend.

Ken nodded to Vin in greeting, a greeting ignored by the still surly man, and then inclined his head to Ryosuke. “Aniki. I heard you were back,” he said, standing before the couch where Ryosuke and Vin sat. “It is good you made it home safe.”

Ryosuke looked up at Ken through his sunglasses for a moment, and then dropped his eyes again, staring ahead into space. “I see nothing has changed here,” he remarked softly, bordering on resigned.

“No, nothing,” Ken said, his voice joining Ryosuke’s in its resignation as he cast a look at the women mingling quietly together on the other side of the room. He rubbed a hand over his near-bald head, his hair buzzed down to a black layer of fuzz. Ken was old school yakuza, but not old school enough to sport a punch perm. “More come every day, squeezing themselves into our group and squeezing us out. It’s hard to have a say in operations when everybody we have is a bloody grunt.”

Ryosuke didn’t reply; nothing really had changed. “How is Kaede? I thought you and the rest would be with her.” There was a hint of dangerous reproach in his voice.

“Relax, aniki. Kumicho is pretty much the same as usual, as far as I can tell,” Ken reported while searching through his pants pockets, finally pulling out a torn and crumpled packet of cigarettes. “You know she’s tough as… heh, steel.”

“Sister complex….” Vin muttered, eliciting a glance and a smirk from Ken. Ryosuke ignored them both. They didn’t have any sisters.

“You being away made her kinda edgier, but that’s all,” Ken continued, tapping a cigarette partway out from the packet against his opposite hand. “Kumicho hasn’t taken part in any big offensives while you were gone either. Gutting the odd prisoner is the closest she’s come to any Soldats bastard. Nothing to worry yourself about.” That was debatable. Ishinomori Tower wasn’t the impenetrable fortress it used to be. Snakes had slithered into their midst, one in particular coiling its scaly hide around Kaede and whispering in her ear with its forked tongue. Nowhere was totally safe. There was always cause to worry.

Ken brought the packet of cigarettes to his mouth and tugged the protruding one free between his lips. The receptionist, who had been watching his, Ryosuke’s, and Vin’s every move in the manner of a school teacher watching troublemaking students and waiting for them--expecting them--to do something ‘inappropriate’, cleared her throat noisily and meaningfully behind him before tapping a fingernail against the ‘no-smoking’ sign on window frame by her head with pointed clicks, a tight smile on her face as though she enjoyed her preconceptions being validated. A couple of Dominique’s supports who stood the closest to Ryosuke and his comrades, previously chatting by the sculpture, also turned sharp looks at Ken and his cigarette, hands going sternly to hips or arms being folded crossly.

Ken, frozen with his cigarette held in his pursed lips, first glanced over his shoulder at the intolerant receptionist and then to his right at the bad-tempered women, his eyebrows raised and his brown eyes bugging out a bit, obviously realising his faux pas but seeming unsure what to do about it… or perhaps unsure what his critics would do. A diehard gangster he was, but he was in the midst of questionable allies--potential enemies more like--on virtually hostile ground. And unlike Vin, Ken had great respect for the opposite sex. Too much some would say, but it was true he was a gentleman in that respect despite his shady life.

Ken reached slowly for his cigarette with his left hand, the hand not holding the packet, taking it tentatively out of his mouth as though any quicker motion would bring down the women’s devastating wrath upon him. The metallic clicks of Ryosuke flipping open his silver lighter and then thumbing forth the flame pre-empted anything else, attracting the surprised stare of Ken as well as the livid glares of Dominique’s two supporters. Ryosuke held out the lighter to his brother; a torch to rekindle his spirit and a hand to steady his nerves. Ryosuke would be damned if he’d let one of his own show frailty here, for dozens of Dominique’s allies to see.

Following a brief instant of hesitation, Ken wisely availed himself of Ryosuke’s proffered lighter and lit the end of his cigarette. He took a somewhat cautious drag from it, eyeing the women next to the sculpture dubiously. Judging by their incensed expressions, the gaijins were affronted by the blatant exhibition of insolence yet held their spiteful tongues, settling for hurling fiery daggers through their eyes at Ken and Ryosuke. They wouldn’t raise an objection or move to enforce the violated policy while Ryosuke, a blood relation of the Ishinomori family, was in attendance with the infractor. It didn’t matter that he had instigated the infringement; his station did permit him some limited personal freedom. The respect of Dominique’s followers at least extended that much, though it was often just for show. As soon as Ken was separated from him the women, including the bold receptionist, would likely swoop upon the gangster like a flock of ravenous vultures.

“Ah, thanks aniki,” Ken said in a puff of smoke that wafted above Ryosuke and Vin’s heads. The cigarette was held between the fingers and thumb of his left hand, but his pinkie finger stayed rigid, sticking straight out as if the cigarette was a delicate bone china teacup he was elegantly sipping from. Looking intently, one could tell that the skin tone of his little finger didn’t quite match the rest of his hand--just a tad pinker shade. In addition the finger’s texture looked too smooth, lacking the soft and subtle dimples and wrinkles of supple flesh. Ken’s left pinkie finger was a prosthetic, a memento of a debt paid to the kumicho of the Kanagawa Koutetsu for a weakness of character years ago. The failure was unimportant now; amends had been made, the issue resolved. The Kanagawa Koutetsu was disbanded anyway, the old bosses dead, in prison, or simply gone, nowhere to be found. It was the same for most of its members.

A stickler for honour and tradition, Ken hadn’t wanted to attach a false finger to the stump that had remained after he had tendered the digit as compensation. Ryosuke knew the missing finger had been a reminder of his disgrace, the shame something not to be hidden but endured and remembered so that the failing may never be repeated. Ken was yakuza through and through. But appearing to have all of his fingers intact at least at initial inspection improved his ability to blend in; the absence of a pinkie--and one that had been so cleanly amputated--was normally an accurate indication of an individual’s history being intimately entwined with a yakuza clan, a history disreputable in the eyes of the general public and those aligned with law and order. Sometimes advertising a yakuza affiliation, past or present, plain for any eye to see was not desirable.

“Second-hand smoke polluting my lungs,” Vin mumbled petulantly to himself as Ken’s cigarette smoke blew over him, his head turned away from Ryosuke and his partner’s old friend. “Inconsiderate jerks all around me. Cancer’s going to kill me faster than any bullet will. Hmph.” Ryosuke supposed Vin was on the women’s side when it came to the no-smoking regulation.

“The rest of the guys are around,” Ken said to Ryosuke, either not hearing Vin or pointedly taking no notice of his belligerent mutterings. “On a break, I guess you could say.” He sighed wearily, smoke clouding the air in front of his face. “Can’t get real close to kumicho when she’s here in the tower anymore.” Ken tossed his head to the right, towards the other half of the room that Dominique’s soldiers occupied. “Those women that are always near her have been clamping down, freezing us out. I basically just shadow them where I can. But at least a couple of us go with kumicho when she leaves the tower, and stick damn close. You know we’d never let her out of our sight then. There’s nothing those women could do to stop us protecting our kumicho outside the tower short of putting a couple dozen bullets in us.”

Ryosuke merely nodded. Not all the ex-members of the defunct Kanagawa Koutetsu group where dead, in jail, or missing. Those that had decided to throw in their lot with the Ishinomori family following the group’s seizure of Yokohama and virtually all of Kanagawa prefecture after it had gravitated to Ryosuke, looking at him as their boss, though their official leader was Kaede. There weren’t many of that core left now, the numbers dwindling as a result of fatal clashes with Soldats operatives and suicidal stratagems imposed by Dominique and her lieutenants. The scant few that had evaded such a fate thus far were Ryosuke’s closest comrades, some of his best friends from his former yakuza clan, and the men that he had appointed to guard Kaede with their lives. This put them at constant and caustic odds with the squad Dominique had assigned to supposedly protect Kaede, the two sides vying to be the chief holders of that responsibility. It was a struggle Ryosuke’s men were slowly giving ground on, slowly but surely being pushed into the background and away from Kaede more and more. Kaede, for her role in the affair, was non-partisan, behaving like all the people who comprised her bodyguard were trivial annoyances she had to live with. Ryosuke had tried to influence her in supporting their old yakuza brothers, citing that they were drastically more trustworthy. But Dominique, as always, had his sister’s ears first and foremost… and covered them when she wanted to.

Ryosuke cocked his embittered gaze towards the doors of his nemesis’s office as one of the two cracked open, another foreign woman in a black suit slipping quietly into the waiting room. She took a second to spot Ryosuke and his company across on the other side of the room, and then immediately proceeded straight towards them, weaving between her fellow soldiers that littered her path. The woman came to a halt on Ryosuke’s left, next to the black leather couch he and Vin were sitting and lounging on respectively, purposely standing an ample distance away from Ken. A hand when to her hip and she raised her chin haughtily, literally peering down her nose at Ryosuke.

“Lady Kaede will see you now,” she notified him, her scornful tone suggesting that she thought it chore to tell him and that his sister was being entirely too charitable, as if he was an impertinent lowbrow commoner stubbornly seeking audience with a queen. It rolled off Ryosuke’s back however, stoicism the only thing he bared. The contempt conveyed towards him from Dominique’s supporters wasn’t anything new, and his daily exposure to it had numbed him. Let them and their commander do their worst.

“Well, it’s about time!” Vin spat as he sat up on the couch, his arms unfolding from behind his head and his legs uncrossing, feet stamping on the floor. He was obviously no follower of stoicism. Vin bent forwards in his seat while he glowered at ‘Kaede’s’ messenger, his forearms on his knees. “We’ve been waiting for fucking ages! I thought you’d left us here to rot!” It wouldn’t have shocked Ryosuke if that were actually the case.

The woman smiled thinly at Vin and his berating; a falsely--and scarcely--civil smile that hid fury behind it and promising vicious reprisals later… if she had the nerve. While Vin was seen as an even lower form of life in the Ishinomori group than Ryosuke, Dominique’s soldiers were presumably wary of his capabilities since they had never made a hostile move against him. Yet, at any rate. His partnership with Ryosuke probably also benefited his position, though doubtless not very much when bearing in mind where the eldest Ishinomori family relative ranked in the soldiers’ estimations.

The messenger stepped to the side, turning and flourishing an arm out in invitation for Ryosuke and Vin to go ahead of her. The light from the expanse of window opposite caught something silver on the collar of her black suit jacket, a shining star dazzling on the blanket of dark. The tiny blades of twin swords flashed, light shimmering down their lengths. The star was the badge that Dominique’s co-conspirators had the habit of wearing without fail during all the times Ryosuke had seen them, a telltale sign of their despicable allegiance; disk-shaped with the insignia of two women kneeling in front of one another and brandishing upright double-edged swords that knights from the European middle ages once plied.

The sight of the emblem jogged Ryosuke’s memory, the flash of worked metal a flash in his mind, the silver crest becoming a brown embossment on old cracked leather. His right hand reflexively went to his chest, over his heart and over the book stowed inside his overcoat. Ryosuke should have recognised it sooner; the pins Dominique’s soldiers showed off was the same as the design imprinted on the front cover of Langonel’s Manuscript. Not for the first time he reconsidered his decision to hand over the tome to Dominique. If it weakened Soldats somehow that was all well and good, however if it came at the cost of Dominique and her faction being strengthened…. But to present himself empty handed before Dominique and Kaede would be perilous; the cunning gaijin would certainly use his perceived failure to further corrupt his image in his little sister’s eyes. Dominique had craftily exploited the weight of her word to promote the importance of Langonel’s Manuscript to Kaede, meaning that the younger woman now wanted it too. And Ryosuke was loath to disappoint his sister. He was trapped and he knew it, his choice no choice at all. He couldn’t afford to relinquish any more footing in Kaede’s heart to Dominique’s stranglehold; he had to dig his heels in and retain every shred of purchase he had. To have any more wrenched away from him was to lose his sister’s heart completely to Dominique.

Vin hauling himself ungainly to his feet and then curtly shouldering by Ken cleared Ryosuke’s mind of the metallic flash and its implications, his partner’s morose griping, too low to actually hear, also playing its part. With the laid-back way Vin moved one wouldn’t believe he had been winged in a gunfight some long hours past, the scathing bullet providing basis for the term ‘close shave’, having ripped by a little too near to the gangster’s body and scoring a gash in his flesh. A hasty provisional patch-up job in a restroom of Charles de Gaulle International Airport had apparently been enough to stanch the wound if not the pain, but Vin had not brought up his injury since. Ryosuke had been relieved his partner hadn’t been more seriously hurt. It would have been… problematic.

Ryosuke got to his feet after Vin, standing slowly up to his full height like an awakened behemoth or erected ebon monolith, towering over everybody else around him. With pounding strides and a faint chinking of steel he traversed the minefield of women ahead of him, his compelling presence still sufficient enough to carve a route through otherwise immovable beings, Vin trailing dourly at his heels and the messenger marching arrogantly after them both, a swagger in her step.

Ryosuke turned an eye over his left shoulder, past Vin and the escorting soldier and through the black forest of prospective backstabbers, back to where he had left Ken. As he had predicted, the forest had expanded, putting out branches in his wake. Three of Dominique’s supporters penned Ken, his lit cigarette the flame for these moths. Ken disgustingly folded fast under their pitiless frowns and demanding postures, a rueful grin on his sheepish face while he stubbed out his crime on his prosthetic pinkie and then bent the cigarette with his thumb. Ryosuke doubted his old friend would be waiting there, alone in a gathering place of their rivals, on his return.

Nearing the doors to Dominique’s office, which would then in turn lead to Kaede’s, another black business suit clad woman sitting sophisticatedly yet casually on the edge of the security desk flanking the office entrance slipped off her perch to bar Ryosuke and Vin’s path. “You are familiar with the procedure,” she half-questioned levelly while the soldier who had marshalled the two men took up position by her side, folding her arms firmly with a conceited smirk on her face, bolstering the doors’ blockade.

Familiar with the procedure Ryosuke and Vin were; it was a procedure that rankled them both, insolent and unwarranted for the likes of them with their exalted stations. Moving to one side, over to the security desk under the watchful eyes and smug looks of the soldiers-turned-sentries, they began relinquishing their arms, each dumping the weapons into a waiting tray. Some weapons, at any rate. A knowing look passed between Ryosuke and Vin after they were done, the trays containing no more than a couple of armaments; the primary weapons that they were known to carry. There were no metal detectors to go through--or for the special qualities of Ryosuke’s coat to play havoc with--here unlike in more travelled areas of the tower, and the guards were disinclined to pat the men down. Ordinarily the sloppy security measures ‘safeguarding’ Kaede’s place of work would enrage Ryosuke, however in this case it permitted him to circumvent Dominique’s draconian regulations that unjustly applied to him. His signature revolver was gone as was his piano wire, but there were a lot more weapons still secreted about his person, stowed away inside his black overcoat. He knew for fact it was the same for Vin; his comrade’s pair of Beretta elites lay in the tray, except that was a mere tiny fraction of the weapons he kept close to his body. As rankling as the ‘no weapons’ policy was, it didn’t come near to as rankling as it could have been.

Satisfied, the guard who had reminded Ryosuke and Vin of the rules to entering their leader’s and Kaede’s offices ushered them onwards with a bored dismissing wave before parking herself on the security desk again, furrowing her brow at her nails. In the meantime the other woman opened one of double doors and held it in place, giving a shepherding wave of her own; an impatient wave. Not wanting to wait any longer than they already had anyway, Ryosuke and Vin were only too willing to comply, the latter man in his foul temperament violently shoving the door that was still closed open, sending it flying as he cleared his path.

The two gangsters trudged from one side of Dominique’s empty office to Kaede’s office on the opposing side briskly, a somewhat anxious quiet around them once the soldier had shut the doors behind them, shutting out all but the most animated chatter going on in the waiting room in tandem, shrinking it to a soft droning of minimal waxes and wanes. An expectant atmosphere saturated the office, the air tingling, electric; an atmosphere where breaths were held and hearts quickened. Ryosuke’s feet couldn’t get him to Kaede’s office doors fast enough.

Consequently Ryosuke was the one to barge through doors this time, the thump of his impetuous hands slapping against them as he flung away the obstructions his announcing knock. He knew Kaede would not be by herself, and he did not reserve any etiquette for the usurper she would be in the company of. He could impart just as little courtesy towards Dominique as she and her minions did towards him.

And sure enough Ryosuke’s nemesis was right by Kaede’s side as near as could be, all but rubbing his nose in their familiarity as if she had arranged it so he would burst in to behold it at that precise moment. His sister sat behind a broad desk at the far end of her spacious office, papers of all kinds and sizes ranging from report portfolios to huge blueprints strewn haphazardly across it with a good number having fallen on the floor. Behind the desk beside her, actually leaning over her with a hand clapped intimately on her shoulder, whispering full red lips by Kaede’s left ear and long dark locks but for a tress of silver spilling over the younger woman’s chest, was Dominique.

Upon Ryosuke’s brash entrance Dominique’s turned her attention to the office’s doors, and her hushed lips curled upwards into a self-satisfied smile at the sight of him. She took her time in straightening, but her hand stayed where it was comfortably on Kaede’s shoulder, a representation and reminder of the ‘guidance’ she endowed her protégé with. Guidance. What a joke. It was more akin to the puppeteer’s hand steadying her puppet. By rights Kaede should be sitting on Dominique’s lap, being bounced on the gaijin’s knee.

Ryosuke’s brusque pace had stuttered facing the loathsome scene, but he and it recovered swiftly, the man averse to let Dominique see how her closeness to Kaede impacted him. Vin traced his step a couple of feet behind him, walking into the office with a laboured attempt to act nonchalant, an attempt that as a result fell short of passable. His gait was too stiff, his footfalls too heavy and feet dragging with reluctance, and his eyes darted everywhere except where he was going. Vin was clearly uneasy, probably sensing the antagonistic ambiance he had to be aware materialised whenever Ryosuke and Dominique came into proximity with each other.

Kaede’s office was big, more in common with a living room in size and furnishings. There was a bar complete with stools in one corner and a lounge set in another, the latter with a gigantic black wood cabinet against the wall opposite that was home to a media centre. All of the furnishings were in drab shades, be they black like the cabinet or chrome like the trimmings of the bar. Yet not everything was dull. Paintings hung on the silver walls; vividly coloured though what they depicted with their strange groupings of geometric shapes or unruly masses of lines and swirls was anybody’s guess. Vases, statuettes and other ornaments decorated the room, some of the most attractive curios given spots on pedestals or small tables.

As brightening as these decorative endeavours might have been in the past, now they were layered with dust and melancholy. The vases that had once contained fresh flowers of vibrant yellows and reds, whites and pinks, were all empty. The lustre of silverware and gloss of ceramic had faded. The knick-knacks and pictures were leftovers from Hikaru Ishinomori’s days; this had been her office before her passing. It was as though the room was dying slowly, following after its previous owner, its lingering beauty decaying a bit more each day. Kaede had done nothing to change the décor, adding nothing and removing nothing; touching nothing but the desk, and allowed none but those she was close to permission to step foot inside. Ryosuke wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for her yearning to cling to the past or to lament it. It… hurt… seeing their mother’s things placed as they had been while she was alive, and it hurt seeing them wither from her absence. And it hurt that he didn’t know why she had chosen such items to decorate her office with, why she had liked this painting or why she had liked that urn. Kaede had ultimately spent more time with their mother than Ryosuke had; she knew and understood her better than he. Sometimes he wished… he wished…. What did it matter. Most of his wishes were regrets, and the sort that could not be reconciled. Just those responsible made to pay.

“Ryosuke, dear boy, you have returned!” Dominique gushed with false elation and relief, the smugness in her smile replaced by feigned delight. The glanced at Vin and sniffed derisively, the feigned delight vanishing for an instant in lieu of disapproval. It had been worth bringing Vin along just to provoke such a response from Dominique. For his part, Vin, immersed in his charade of casualness, didn’t appear to notice her allergic reaction to him.

“Big Brother!” Kaede squealed excitedly, evidently taking no insult at Ryosuke’s rude arrival. But then she was forever sweetness to her brother, childlike in spirit and demeanour at the mere sight or mention of him. While it could be said it was an improvement over fervour and fury, seeing Kaede like this brought its own brand of pain. However, for the moment at least, the sight of his sister made contentment and relief well up in Ryosuke’s chest, drowning the dark thoughts concerning perverted innocence and devastated family ties. For now he was simply glad to lay eyes on his beloved little sister--glad to be home.

Holding stoicism in his heart and retaining it over his features as usual, Ryosuke walked across the ash-coloured carpet, the pile from the doors to the desk flattened by countless feet that had treaded there before. He stopped a metre or so from the desk--Kaede’s desk now--and Vin stood adjacent to him on his right, his partner’s gaze still avoidant, the two of them in line with the private elevator on the right-hand wall that was used to travel conveniently between the CEO’s office and the rest of the tower, specifically the living quarters upstairs. Kaede quivered in her high-backed chair at their--or rather, Ryosuke’s--approach, smiling gaily, and the tall gangster believed she would be bouncing in her seat if not for Dominique’s restraining hand on her shoulder. The grip of that hand seemed to tighten as Ryosuke and Vin neared, well-manicured nails almost threatening to dig into Kaede’s flesh.

“I trust the operation went smoothly?” Dominique probed in her cultured tones that persisted even when speaking Japanese, a tinge of menace entwined with the civility that warned of reprisals if she didn’t like the answer

“No,” Ryosuke deadpanned despite the caution, glaring harshly over the rim of his sunglasses at the French woman. “It did not.”

“Yeah, it was a fine thing you did telling us to call ourselves Noir!” Vin suddenly burst out with, his eyes most definitely on Dominique now. The amber in them smouldered, looking like molten syrup. “It nearly got our heads blown off when the *real* Noir showed up!”

Ryosuke spared a guarded glance at Kaede, gauging the effect his partner’s anger at her close confidante had on her. She was known to defend Dominique passionately, with violent retaliations the most common method. However in this instance Kaede appeared unperturbed, simply sitting there in her chair with that happy smile on her face. Lucky for Vin.

“Oh?” Dominique remarked, her eyebrows rising and the hand not laying claim to Kaede going to her chest in theatrical surprise. “I was unaware that they still existed, let alone were still living in Paris.” She smiled, though it was more of a smirk. “But it couldn’t have been that bad, now could it? You are both here, standing before Lady Kaede and myself looking none the worse for wear, may I say.”

“Hey! I got shot!” Vin exclaimed, one hand heatedly flinging open the right side of his suit jacket while the other flailed animatedly. He gritted his teeth, growling in his throat as burning eyes shot flames at Dominique. Then all of a sudden his ire melted away, his expression becoming meditative and his gaze heading skywards, to the ceiling. “But it did set up a meeting between me and that blonde woman,” he said much more amicably, and seemingly to no one in particular. “Did I ever tell you I have a thing for blondes?” Vin’s usefulness in this situation had come to an end.

“Your abrupt stroke of insight regarding the whereabouts of the book was fortuitous,” Ryosuke said, suspicion paramount. “A pity it hadn’t come sooner. It would have expedited the… errand.”

“I have my sources,” Dominique replied, her smirk perhaps a touch fuller. “Sometimes they work fast, sometimes they do not.”

Tired of sparring with Dominique, and tired of her deft ripostes at every turn, Ryosuke strode forwards a step, pulling out Langonel’s Manuscript from inside his coat, and then dumped it unceremoniously on the desk with a jarring thud that rattled the writing utensils atop it. “There,” he stated coldly, stepping back to his former position. “Your book.”

“I knew you would do it, Big Brother!” Kaede commended as if she truly never had a doubt in her mind, before leaning out of her seat and across the desk to peer at the tome through her bangs.

Dominique bent forward in conjunction with Kaede, her eyes visibly growing bigger and lighting up at the sight of the book, emeralds polishing to a luminous gleam. She traced the emblem on the front cover with her gaze, Ryosuke watching it move along every line. For that brief moment until she stood straight once again Dominique’s pretences vanished, her expression nearly matching Kaede’s ingenuous face. Ryosuke wondered if he had made a terrible mistake giving her Langonel’s Manuscript. Too late now, and what was one more regret.

“Good… good,” Dominique said somewhat breathlessly, her left hand unconsciously smoothing over her skirt. “Now, I imagine you are weary from your trip,” she said, back to her old self. “I suggest you both go and rest.” The dismissal was clear. She had what she wanted.

“Awww!” Kaede moaned, turning in her chair to look up at Dominique next to her.

“Now, now; we have discussed this,” Dominique retorted to the whining, smiling patiently down at Kaede, her hand rubbing the younger woman’s shoulder. The easy rapport made Ryosuke’s stomach churn and bile sear the back of his throat. “You can see your brother after he rests.”

Kaede pouted, but nodded in half-hearted acceptance. “I’ll see you in your suite later, Big Brother,” she said disappointedly.

Vin was already making a beeline for the exit when Ryosuke turned around to leave also, Dominique having put a hex on him spending any private time with his sister for at least several hours. It was really nothing new, but after so long being apart from Kaede the pill was especially bitter to swallow, bleeding acid all the way down.

Ryosuke suddenly halted halfway to the doors of the office, his head angling slightly back towards his left shoulder. “One more thing. Two more, in fact,” he declared grimly. “Noir… they are still alive. And they want that book.” He then carried on the remainder of the distance to the doors, hoping he had stuck a thorn in Dominique and that the wound, however small to begin with, would fester. As for himself, the two young ladies who made up Noir were present only in the farthest reaches of the back of his mind. Ryosuke had more pressing concerns.

******

To be continued….


Author’s ramblings:

Pretty much a plot mover and character developer/introducer. Apologies again for the absence of Mireille and Kirika! But it was necessary, I swear! I couldn’t help it! T_T

Uwagi, Gi = Uguu, how to describe this… it’s a top. Sort of like a shirt. You know, like what samurai wear.

Hakama = A pleated and divided ‘skirt’-like piece of clothing. Usually worn with a gi. Oh, it’s like what mikos (Shinto priestesses) wear! They wear red hakamas and white gis.

Kenjutsu = Like kendo but more concerned with killing with a sword rather than it being a sport.

Kenjutsuka = Someone who practices kenjutsu.

Yukata = Summer kimono. A lighter version of a kimono. It’s usually cotton, I think.

Obi = The sash that goes around kimonos and sometimes yukatas.

Tabi socks = Split-toed socks.

Zori sandals = Sandals, flat sole, with a thong. Like flip-flops, I guess.

Wakizashi = Japanese short sword. Like a shorter/smaller version of the katana.

Oni = Demon.

Aniki = Older brother, senior.

Kumicho = Yakuza boss.